 
## Generations

by Francis Rosenfeld

© 2014 Francis Rosenfeld

Smashwords Edition

Cover Design by Elan

Discover other titles by Francis Rosenfeld:

Terra Two

Letters to Lelia

Fair

The Plant – A Steampunk Story

Door Number Eight

### Contents

Chapter One - Of Mermaids

Chapter Two - Of Hyperspace, Magnets and Cooking

Chapter Three - Of the Effects of Gamma Rays on Infinite Purple

Chapter Four - Of Code, Chemistry and Music

Chapter Five - Of Conversation and Cultural Differences

Chapter Six - Of Being

Chapter Seven - Of Life Ethics

Chapter Eight - Of Love and Parenting

Chapter Nine - Of Infinite Wisdom

Chapter Ten - Of the Meaning of Life

Chapter Eleven - Of Mentoring

Chapter Twelve - Of Alchemy

Chapter Thirteen - Of Here and There

Chapter Fourteen - Of Useless Yuck

Chapter Fifteen - Of Progress

Chapter Sixteen - Of Lavish Indulgence

Chapter Seventeen - Of Caramel Covered Blue Pears

Chapter Eighteen - Of the Heart of Scorpius

Chapter Nineteen - Of the Past

Chapter Twenty - Of Dragons

Chapter Twenty One - Of Feelings

Chapter Twenty Two - Of the Wilderness

Chapter Twenty Three - Of Vocation

Chapter Twenty Four - Of Patterns

Chapter Twenty Five - Of Reality

Chapter Twenty Six - Of Flux

Chapter Twenty Seven - Of Immortality

Chapter Twenty Eight - Of Love

Letter: To the Humon Cloud, Tagas Cloud's Secondary Inheritor,

In Grace

About the Author

Other Books by Francis Rosenfeld

### Chapter One

### Of Mermaids

_"Don't go near it, Lily, you know we're not supposed to!"_ Jenna squeaked, alarmed.

Lily smiled defiantly and stretched her toes to touch the delicate foam left behind by the ocean in its never ending rouse. Under Jenna's horrified stare she lowered her foot until her toes touched the surface of the water. It was warmer than she thought and had a dense, somewhat oily consistency, that lingered on the skin holding on a second longer before it dripped back into the ocean.

_"Wash it off, you're going to get sick, I heard it burns your skin if you leave it on for more than ten minutes!"_ her little friend continued, in a panic.

_"We're using the same water, silly, just desalinated,"_ Lily thought, unperturbed. A little boy with a freckled face and pale blue eyes approached and bent down to touch the water surface with intense curiosity, trying to take in all its aspects through his senses: the water was warm, slick, very dense judging by the amount of refraction. The thick liquid made everything under the surface look blue-green and the water was so clear that he could see every detail as if magnified by a lens. The real sun came out from behind a cloud and the satellite started shining brightly again, dazzling in the coffee colored sky.

_"Let's go for a swim!"_ Lily sent her intent through the neural interlink.

_"You are not supposed to, I'll tell on you, you know I will, I'm going to call sister Sarah right now and you're all in trouble,"_ Jenna started, bubbling like a little brook approaching a rocky bed.

_"If you do we won't let you know what we found,"_ Lily thought. Curiosity valiantly fought prudence and won: Jenna quieted down, watching over Lily and Jimmy's shoulders, trying to capture the experience vicariously. All around them a little group of tanned children gathered closely.

"What are you doing?" a familiar voice boomed from behind them, just as Lily and Jimmy were starting off into uncharted waters. Everybody froze in their shoes and quickly started compiling the most believable plan to get themselves out of their present pickle. Jenna would have liked to volunteer the commentary that she disapproved and was going to let sister Sarah know about it, but she got caught in Seth's gaze and figured she would be better off keeping her distance from the whole situation.

Seth was still waiting for an answer and looked to the children for the inevitable made-up story but she had appeared too suddenly and the kids, whose imaginations were impressive under regular circumstances, didn't have enough time to concoct one.

"Off you go, go home!" Seth uttered eventually, struggling to conceal a burst of laughter. "I told you to stay away from the water, didn't I?" The children shuffled swiftly on their feet and disappeared into the distance, relieved that they got away so easily this time.

Seth crouched at the water's edge and caressed the glossy surface with absent gestures, watching the slow liquid span the length of her fingers, as if she saw it for the first time. She stared intently into the deep, through the water so clear she could see every spec of sand on the bottom. For all their efforts the vast oceans of Terra Two were still a big unknown. They had brought fish from Earth, of course, but it was raised in fresh water ponds on the islands, the natural water of their home world was tested and found too salty and rich in sulfur to accommodate life. She sunk her hands into a shallow tide pool and the liquid closed around them, creating slow moving swirls on the surface and dipping slightly around the disturbance.

She advanced into the mellow waters carefully treading the bottom, one step at a time, trying to make sure the sea floor was solid before moving farther. Her shoulders tensed and her heart was pounding and she got angry at the thought of being afraid. She raised her chin and straightened her back and walked more decisively, failing to see the edge of the continental shelf in front of her feet and stepping into the void.

Seth had never wondered if humans could sweat under water, it seemed like one of those situations that one doesn't encounter often enough to inform oneself about, but she got the answer to this question nevertheless when she was instantly drenched in cold sweat as she lost her balance and got pulled into the warm and very fast moving rip current running parallel to the shore. She could swim but knew that even the best swimmers are often no match to the power of the sea. Everything happened so fast she didn't have time to panic, the water was moving her along the shore, swaddling her in a dense network of liquid turbulence. Even if she tried she couldn't sink. The salty water pushed her close to the surface and the closer she was the faster the waters moved her, picking up speed like a sled down a steep hill. In less than five minutes their village was completely out of sight and the water moved her farther from the shore.

_"Sarah,"_ she thought, hoping that the redhead or one of the other sisters had their neural interlink bracelet on and could hear her. Apparently this just happened to be the time when everyone decided to take a breather and be alone with their own thoughts for a change. It was only five and Seth had two hours until Vespers when she knew everybody would be in communication range. She still couldn't fight the current, she tried to move slowly towards the edge as she was taught on Earth but the viscosity of the water combined with the speed created a half pipe that threw everything back to its center. Seth could see several islands in the distance, the closest one she approximated to be about fifteen minutes away. She looked down to see the details on the rocky bottom which seemed very close though she knew there had to be at least a hundred feet of water under her by now. When she looked back up she saw the island zooming by and vanishing into the distance.

_"How fast is this thing?"_ she shuddered. _"Good thing I'm still on the planet, with any luck by seven o'clock I'll circle the world and get back home."_ She tried contacting the sisters again, with no luck.

The warm waters soothed her muscles and nerves while they carried her faster and faster past islands large and small and a strange euphoria sunk in, making her giggle. The water was making her feet tingle and ran through her hair like a brush, over and over again.

_"A hundred strokes"_ she remembered, _"who has time to brush their hair for so long every day"_ she thought. _"A hundred strokes,"_ she started laughing gently, carried by the current and feeling cozy and warm. _"One, two, three, four,..."_ She started yawning. _"Stop it!"_ she yelled at herself, but the brush strokes continued, tempting her to count them. _"...fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen..."_ Her eyelids grew heavy and despite a titanic struggle she fell asleep.

***

The suns were high in the sky when Seth came to, around midday. She was laying on top of a large palm frond on a small crescent shaped beach strewn with driftwood. At its edge, behind a row of coconut trees, started the plantings of what looked like a small farm. Seth could see the house in the distance and hear the giggles of a small group of children approaching.

"Claude, Claude, come quickly, you won't believe what I found!"

Claude approached as fast as he could, scrambling through knotted tomato chords and pumpkin tendril curlicues. _"What is it, Jose?"_ They stopped in fear and awe at the sight of the laying creature.

"Wow, dude, I found a mermaid!"

"Don't get close, I heard they bite! Do you want to go tell your parents?"

"Later. It has legs. I thought they were supposed to look like fish?"

"Shut up, Thomas, you know they grow legs when they dry up."

"Yeah, that's right, man, I forgot."

They approached cautiously from opposite sides, careful not to awaken the sea creature. Seth kept her eyes closed and summoned all her will power to prevent herself from laughing.

_"Do you think it can hear us?"_ wondered Robert, a chubby kid with straw-like hair that moved with every breath of wind.

"I don't know, maybe. Dude, it looks human."

"Hi," said Seth, getting up. The little group ran away in wretched panic, trying to put as much distance between their tiny selves and the she-monster as they could.

"Can I talk to your parents?" asked Seth in the sweetest, most persuasive voice she could muster, forgetting that mermaids were famous for their mesmerizing voices. The children got the confirmation that they were indeed in the presence of the mythical creature and froze in fear.

"Do you think she is going to eat us?" asked Thomas with a voice so small even he could hardly hear it.

"Can you tell me where I am?" asked Seth, gazing deeply into the eyes of the kid closest to her.

The latter couldn't break eye contact, gulped several times trying to speak and then started crying with high pitched wails. Seth approached him gently to comfort him as the rest of the children watched her with pure terror, waiting for the imminent carnage.

She pushed the hair off the little boy's forehead, wiped his tears and set him back down, bending to his level to make herself less scary.

"Please, I am lost, can you take me to your parents? I really have to get back home," Seth asked sweetly.

The little boy hesitated, then reached for her hand, despite the horrified gasps of the others, and led her towards the farm.

_"Tell me about your home"_ the little boy found the courage to ask _. "Do you have gills?"_ he continued, with no regard for logic or consistency.

A cascade of questions and comments followed: did she have to come up for air every once in a while, did she have an underwater garden, how come the water didn't push her to the surface when she slept, was it dark on the bottom of the ocean, were there a lot of other creatures down there, what did she eat, did they cook in the boiling water from the volcanic eruptions, how did they tell time, did she have any friends, did she go to school, did she get along with her siblings, and last but not least, what were her magical powers.

***

By the time the small group arrived at the farm house the sisters were alerted to Seth's disappearance and were bombarding the airwaves with calls. Coherence got lost in the commotion and the leader was trying in vain to concentrate on one message or another while holding up the barrage of questions from the children and the somewhat awkward introduction to their parents. She signaled to the sisters that she was ok and will talk later.

"Papa," little Thomas said, "we found a mermaid and she is really nice. Can we keep her, please?" he asked.

Thomas's father looked at Seth and introduced himself.

"Jules Roget, pleasure."

He was frowning and smoothing his mustache, trying to assess how the stranger suddenly appeared in his back yard. As funny as the children's assumption was he had to admit that there was no way for somebody to show up on that beach without passing through the farm other than coming from the water.

"I got pulled in a rip current, the waters can be pretty treacherous if you don't pay attention," started Seth politely.

The farmer's frown amplified, carving a deep crease between his eyebrows.

"Nobody comes from the water." he said tersely.

"Where am I?", Seth asked.

"71 49'45.21n 29 39'23.86w" Jules answered.

_"That's on the other side of the planet, they have a shuttle leaving for our camp in three hours," s_ ister Jove laughed.

_"Do you remember those fascinating patterns we saw on the surface of the ocean when we first approached Terra Two? They are spontaneously forming currents, too bad we can't control them, they are very fast."_ Sarah chuckled softly.

_"You two do realize I will be back soon, right?"_ Seth retorted, annoyed that the distance didn't allow her to respond to the banter with one of her legendary stares.

_"Didn't we tell you to stay away from the water?"_ sister Jove pushed her luck.

_"Let's hope the children are not listening to these details,"_ Seth sighed, resigned _. "Now that they know they won't sink they are going to ride these currents endlessly and end up goodness knows where. We're going to spend all of our time fetching them."_

The children were of course listening intently, careful not to miss important details about the rides that sounded like glorious fun.

_"You wouldn't dare!"_ Seth addressed them, unconvinced. She raised her eyes and met the furious look of Monsieur Roget who didn't want to have this problem to worry about.

### Chapter Two

### Of Hyperspace, Magnets and Cooking

Feeling the rush of water swoosh around her body sister Novis slid through the concave fluid track moving her right arm slowly, very slowly, careful not to spin out of control at that speed. The thrusters on her arms and legs applied a power differential to adjust for the change in direction.

"Steady at 383mph, left turn, recalculating torque, approaching boundary...Full stop!

Jimmy, what in tarnation are you doing here!?"

Jimmy scooped himself out of the waves, reached into the watery surface and pulled out Lily's hand, followed by Lily herself. The children looked surprised at the question and stared at sister Novis with large innocent eyes.

"We just wanted to try the new game," Jimmy said, apologetically.

"It's not a game, it's a simulation!" sister Novis grunted. "Another half hour down the drain. Sister Roberta, why are Lily and Jimmy in the bubble?"

"Sorry, dear," sister Roberta mumbled. "I must not have refined the brainwave scan enough." She readjusted the frequencies and applied another filter. "Ready to go!" she said.

"StreamPath simulation, take 198 in 3, 2, 1." Sister Novis was back at the beginning of the track, thrusters humming.

"How is it going?" asked Sarah, who had just stepped through the door and was quietly directing Lily and Jimmy out of sister Roberta's lab and towards the beach.

"Don't ask!" sister deAngelis whispered, and judging by the look on sister Roberta's face the latter was at the very end of her frayed nerves, begrudgingly hanging on to a very fragile thread.

"Stream speed 450 mph, Reynolds number 300. Linear drag, holding. Approaching boundary." The drag slowed her down as she approached the lip of her watery track and as she almost pushed past the slight indentation that marked the edge of the stream an unpredictable strand of high turbulence threw her back to the center of the half pipe and the speed jumped back to 539 mph.

"Darn it! Full stop!" sister Novis screamed, exasperated. "We made it here through hyperspace and we can't tame water flowing through a pipe, it must be a punishment, I tell you!"

Sister Roberta sighed, recalibrated the wave length modulator and restarted.

"StreamPath simulation, take 199 in 3, 2, 1," she said, with the enthusiasm of a disgruntled camel.

"Full stop!" screamed sister Novis. "I've had it with this nonsense, we're not doing anything else until we figure out why the turbulence is throwing me back. What am I, a human yo-yo? We could do this forever, even the kids got bored after simulation 143!"

Truth be told, the kids didn't get bored, they followed Sarah's direction out of sister Roberta's lab, circled the building and got back in through one of the back windows, unnoticed. They were sitting on an old spectrometer table, quiet as little mice, careful not to draw any attention to themselves. They found the energy in the room exhilarating and were not going to miss it for the world, the grown-ups were doing real work, the kind of work kids weren't normally privy to.

"The edge turbulence is completely random," sister Roberta apologized. "I tried every modeling equation there is and every time another random swirl pops up!"

"How is it going?" Seth popped in, not realizing that no amount of authority granted her the privilege to ask this question safely at this time. Both sister Roberta and sister Novis pinned her back with murderous stares and she quickly left the battle field. She had a lot of other things to do anyway.

"We could try a linear increase in thrust to keep your speed constant," said sister Roberta, unconvinced.

"We could also try to turn me into a human cannon ball," answered the other sister sarcastically. "Why don't I man the controls and you get thrown around, water can be pretty hard at four hundred miles an hour!"

"Because you don't know how, dear," answered Roberta, candidly.

Sister Novis mumbled, irate, and looked at sister deAngelis for support. The latter was staring at the equations, mimicking analysis. Nobody could understand sister Roberta's equations other than the sister herself, and sister deAngelis doubted that even the latter knew what she was doing half the time.

_"I can hear you, you know. You have your bracelet on,"_ Roberta replied patiently.

"What if we slow me down to 150 mph?" asked sister Novis.

"Have you ever switched gears from fifth to second?" questioned sister Roberta. Sister Novis had and didn't need additional clarification.

"Ok, so you're approaching the boundary at approximately 400 mph, the wall effect kicks in and the turbulence should become irrelevant at this point..."

"What wall effect?" asked sister deAngelis with a blank stare. Sister Roberta was about to start explaining the fundaments of fluid dynamics but she stopped abruptly.

"From the....oh, dear!" sister Roberta gasped. "It is not a pipe" she said. She looked down, trying to avoid sister Novis's gaze in order not to aggravate her.

"How is it going?" sister Joseph chimed-in with uncharacteristic cheerfulness.

"Get out!!" the choir screamed infuriated.

"So, what's with the pipe?" asked sister Novis, trying very hard not to get mad at the fact that she had run the same flawed simulation for the last seven hours.

"Of course turbulence matters, there is no solid boundary," sister Roberta faded into a blissful scientific world in her mind, completely oblivious to urgency and practicality.

"So, do you think you can fix it?" asked sister Novis, hopeful.

"Fix it? I can make it faster! Why, at the speed we can reach anything would literally take off, I can hardly wait!" she continued but then met sister Novis's stare and remembered the cannon ball comment. "On second thought we'll keep you at 400 mph, that should push you out of the stream."

"What if I fall in another stream?" asked sister Novis.

"We're counting on it, it would be very unpleasant if you fell on slow water. Welcome to our new transit system!"

"Are you sure I can jump safely? I don't think human bodies are designed to take this amount of shear. How do I get out when I reach the destination?"

"Details, dear! We'll work on that," said sister Roberta absentminded. Her brain was focused on solving the problem and a broad smile lit up her face. Sister Novis lifted her eyes to take a break from all the tension and saw Lily and Jimmy sitting quietly with eyes as large as saucers on the spectrometer table with the old spectrometer bound permanently to it, an endearing reminder of sister Roberta's early innovations.

_"Just pray,"_ sister Novis reassured herself. _"Everything is going to be alright."_

_"I can still hear you, you know,"_ sister Roberta added.

_"Can I ask how it is going now?"_ Seth chimed in.

_"No!",_ the choir replied.

***

The suns were really bright that morning, the light filtered through the glass enclosure and sparkled on the beveled edges diffracting into rainbows. The sisters were gathered in the central space, wrapping up morning meditations.

It was a habit they had taken on recently. Since they all spent some time in prayer in the morning they decided to do it together and use the time after service to catch up and coordinate their schedule. Work had become so automated that all of their time was divided between mindful introspection, teaching and research, so a morning get together didn't feel like an imposition at all, they all looked forward to this opportunity to socialize.

They had just concluded the blessings and were getting ready to leave when the serenity of the glass hall was broken by a terrible racket. It sounded like a herd of cats ran through the pantry and disturbed every pot and pan on the shelves.

"What on...", Seth said. "Sarah, where are your pupils?" she asked.

"They are not supposed to be here yet, the class is not in two hours," the latter said, confused.

Sister Joseph emerged from the kitchen all flustered, huffing and puffing like a locomotive with a stock pot in one hand and a giant ladle in the other.

_"Here comes the cauldron,"_ Sarah thought and was immediately interrupted by dirty looks from both Seth and a fuming Joseph.

"Whatever are you doing, sister?" Seth asked, too befuddled to be angry.

"Who left the pots in front of the refrigerator?" the latter roared, accompanied by the clatter of the last dropping lids. They were metallic and reverberant and made screeching noises as they reached the stainless steel countertops. Sister Abigail, who was on kitchen duty, mumbled something unintelligible under her breath and she threw a pan back on the stove. A hiss was followed by a thin wisp of steam which was followed by another unintelligible mumble.

Sister Roberta's heart sank. She had been running an empirical test to double check her fluid dynamics simulations and didn't put the pots back on the rack because she was planning to continue the experiment after matins. She didn't think there would be anyone in the kitchen, it was so early after all...

_"There is ALWAYS someone in the kitchen, do you think breakfast cooks itself?"_ sister Abigail retorted. The admonition didn't have the expected result since it suggested to sister Roberta something new to try; her mind went off on a tangent and started designing an automated chef.

Seth got up, followed by the curious group, to attend to the commotion just as the children started arriving for class. On the large induction stove in the middle of the kitchen a large pot of oatmeal was simmering, giving off a little burnt smell.

_"Great! She burned it again!"_ sister Novis thought.

_"We'll wait until it is your turn for kitchen duty, then,"_ sister Abigail replied, offended.

All around the kitchen, strewn in complete disarray over the shelves, the floors and the table tops lay frying pans, cooking utensils and storage containers whose partly spilled contents mingled on the counters. Sister Abigail was dusted from head to toe in vanilla sugar and cinnamon and looked like an enormous pastry treat.

"Breakfast is ready," she said, scooping heaping ladles of the runny glop into delicate bowls covered in fine tracery.

The aroma of fresh baked bread steamed out of the oven and sister Novis breathed a sigh of relief that there was at least something edible on the menu that morning. Sister Abigail did her best to remove the flour, couscous, nutmeg, tossed sugar, olive oil, cocoa and honey from the table surface so they could lay down their bowls.

"So, can I ask how it is going now?" Seth asked sister Roberta. The sister shuffled uncomfortably in the chair.

"There is the little issue of randomness," she coughed, slightly embarrassed. "If only I could figure out what makes those currents form it would be really useful. Otherwise we only got a solution to move fast across the water with no control over the destination at all."

"What's your theory?" Seth asked.

"Water temperature is an obvious factor but it's a merging of conditions that makes the shifts happen: depth, density, differences in water chemistry, tide. I spent the last two weeks looking at live satellite broadcasts and can't figure out repeating patterns. So far we can somewhat explain the phenomenon, but not replicate it," the sister continued.

"What were you doing with the pots?" Seth asked.

"Making life miserable for the rest of us!" sister Joseph snarled, still annoyed.

"I was trying to figure out how the viscosity changes with speed and temperature. It is a shear-thinning fluid, the faster it gets the faster it gets," sister Roberta said to a mystified audience who felt it had been punished enough with the runny glop that stuck to the pot to have to listen to the reasons behind the unfortunate kitchen occurrence.

"What is a shear-thinning fluid?" Sarah asked.

"This is," said sister Roberta, picking up a bottle of honey and squeezing it at her.

"Seriously, sometimes, sister!" Sarah protested, "use your words!"

"It gets more fluid when you shake it," obliged sister Roberta.

"Well, keep working on it, something will come up" said Seth, and she continued eating her oatmeal without joy or displeasure.

***

Despite sister Roberta's heroic efforts to figure out what laws of physics were generating the strange fluid dynamics phenomenon it was Louise, one of the children, who discovered by chance what made the water move. The kids were playing at the edge of the ocean dropping watercolor in it to watch the fascinating patterns that the paint created as it dispersed slowly in the silky waves. Louise bent down and stretched her hand to reach the ephemeral arabesques and her magnetic bangle fell into the water.

A magic thing happened: the random arabesques aligned themselves into long linear strands inside the circle of the bracelet, redirecting the flow.

"Goodness me, I think the magnetic field of the planet is creating the patterns, this water must be saturated with ions", gasped sister Roberta. "That's why the currents are so unpredictable, these suns are crazy, we couldn't figure out their paths either."

She went back to the lab in a hurry to study the implications of the findings while the children spent the rest of the afternoon painting the ocean with magnets and gouaches.

***

Sarah sat at one end of the long kitchen table watching chamomile steep slowly in hot water. The afternoon was mellow, one of those slow times that comfort the soul like a plush blanket. One could hear the peaceful sounds of the birds and little animals through the open door and the scent of kitchen herbs saturated the air. She poured the tea in a colorful cup that the children had glazed for her, featuring poppies, delphiniums and lily-of-the-valley, dragged the large bowl of potatoes closer and started peeling. Sister Roberta entered the kitchen with a preoccupied look on her face, holding a long and narrow glass container.

"What's that?" Sarah asked, more out of habit than curiosity because sister Roberta had been so fully immersed in the water propulsion project lately that whatever she was carrying couldn't possibly be related to anything else.

"I'm going to need a little space, I hope I'm not in the way," she started, and continued with her experiment without waiting for the answer. Sarah just nodded, didn't answer, and reached for another potato.

"Give me one of those, if you don't mind. Actually, can you peel a couple more and pass them over here?" she asked. The redhead didn't question the request, she just peeled two more potatoes and gave them to the sister who was too immersed in her work to explain the details. Sarah kept peeling.

"What's for dinner?" sister Roberta asked, moving around the table pushing levers, adjusting settings and inputting revisions into the gizmo.

"Latkes," Sarah answered simply.

"Can I have another potato?" sister Roberta asked, reaching her left arm to get it. Sarah grabbed a peeled potato and gave it to her, then got up and went to the pantry to refill the bowl.

"Are you trying to increase the positive charge?" Sarah asked, unsurprised.

"And the thickness of the fluid," said sister Roberta. "How much magnesium in a potato?"

"For that size, about 80 mg," answered Sarah. "And 1500 mg of potassium."

"You can have these back, then," she returned the last two potatoes and drizzled some cranberry juice in the water.

Sarah grated the last two tubers into the mix and started forming patties. Out of the corner of her eye she could see sister Roberta adjust the magnets to create linear grids, helical swirls, sinusoidal waves, circular whirls and angular direction changes. Sarah kept forming the patties and setting them down in layers on a large plate while her attention was completely absorbed by the unbelievable water puzzle that sister Roberta was so expertly playing with, painting patterns, changing velocities, blending different color streams into bright pastels.

"The oil is hot," sister Roberta advised, turning a dial to bend the linear patterns. Sarah jumped and quickly placed a few patties in the frying pan. The cool potatoes stirred the oil to a rolling boil and then slowed it down to a steady simmer.

"Is that the steering system?" Sarah laughed. Sister Roberta looked back bothered by the lack of seriousness.

"You know, for all the times you people laughed at me and were wrong I should really not explain any of this," she said. She frowned at Sarah to express her displeasure. The latter presented an appropriately reserved and respectful countenance but a impish glimmer sparkled in her eyes. The question still lingered, unanswered.

"Yes, it is!" sister Roberta finally responded. "The latkes need more salt," she said, irked, then grabbed a couple more for the road, picked up the container and left.

***

"Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. Ready or not, here I come!" Jenna said, turning around on her feet and looking for the rest of the children. Jimmy was still running about fifty or sixty feet away, trying to find a good hiding place.

_"Easy pickings,"_ Jenna thought, and started towards him stirring the warm brick colored silt of the beach under her bare feet. Jimmy assessed the situation and didn't want to waste energy running away since his friend was almost next to him. He turned around to face her and vanished slowly into thin air like a marshmallow Cheshire cat.

The surprise befuddled the little girl _. "Where did he go?"_ she wondered.

_"Jimmy?"_ she asked softly through the neural interlink.

_"Yes,"_ a little voice whispered, even more confused than hers. Jenna shook her blond tresses and pushed a stubborn strand of hair out of her eyes. She looked around and saw nothing but palm trees, silty beach and peaceful waves.

_"Where are you?"_ she asked, worried.

***

"StreamPath simulation, take 452 in 3, 2, 1," sister Roberta yawned while she recorded the new test into her work journal. She was bored silly with the never ending fine tuning of the device. To her credit the prototype was progressing splendidly but the adjustments were incredibly fine, in a nanometer range that even her custom made sophisticated equipment had trouble modulating. She turned around and took another sip of coffee while chatting through the interlink with sister Novis and in the process turned a small dial all the way up without noticing. Nothing happened at first, so she continued her conversation with the insistent sister who wanted to know the latest details of her future test track.

_"It is exactly how we ran it yesterday, only smoother,"_ sister Roberta continued to reassure the inquisitive Novis, _"We are getting into the .23nm range, it gets really difficult to calibrate the instruments,"_ she continued and as she turned around she found herself face to face with Jimmy who was perched like a little bird on top of the equalizer with his hair in disarray and a perplexed look in his eyes.

Sister Roberta didn't react, used as she was to the children sticking their little noses into everything from uncomfortably close proximity, but was really annoyed at the possibility of having to rework the experiment so she picked up little Jimmy, ready to give him a piece of her mind.

"You are in real trouble now, mister, I already told you if I find you in here again I'll..." she didn't get a chance to continue, because little Jimmy started sniffling with an aggrieved look on his face.

"I didn't do anything, sister, really I didn't, I was outside playing with Jenna and she was about to catch me and..."

_"What is going on?"_ Seth and Sarah interjected through the neural interlink almost simultaneously, but from different perspectives: Seth because she wanted to ensure the never ending testing of the prototype finally yielded something usable and Sarah because she had heard Jenna call for Jimmy and was relieved to have found him.

"Calm down and start from the beginning," sister Roberta restarted the conversation on a kinder gentler note. "What happened?"

"I was on the beach playing hide and go seek with Jenna, Lucy, Gabe, Mike,..."

"Go on," sister Roberta interrupted the listing of all of Jimmy's friends to get to the action.

"And she finished counting and she was running and I was going to start running away," Jimmy continued, still sniffling but otherwise unperturbed.

"And?" sister Roberta pressed, anxiously.

"And then I was here, and I really don't know how I got here and I really didn't do anything why doesn't anybody believe me," little Jimmy continued to argue his defense, since he already had a standing time-out for the remainder of the week and didn't want to extend the penalty.

Sister Roberta stared him down inquisitively. Little Jimmy also didn't dye the cats green with Sarah's drinkable hair dye, break his sister's glass art, use the redhead's Erlenmeyer flasks to house fish who subsequently grew to big to be taken out, slather butter on the bottom of the micro-titration plate to experiment with the angle of the table and the coefficient of friction, or sneak into the refectory to put water filled whoopee cushions on the chairs.

_"I'm still waiting, sister,"_ Seth commented from the other end of the interlink. Sister Roberta gave Jimmy a _don't you dare move, I'll deal with you in a second_ look and turned to the dial board to double check the readings.

The little gasp was very subtle but didn't escape a keenly attentive Seth. The latter instantly absolved little Jimmy of any wrongdoing and braced herself for another one of sister Roberta's accidental discoveries.

_"Well?"_ she asked, calm as always.

_"Oh, dear..."_ sister Roberta started slowly, trying to delay a succinct account of the event that had a very clear cause but no scientific explanation yet.

_"Sister, I have work to do. Jimmy, are you ok?"_ Jimmy eagerly gave her reassurance, happy to be off the hook.

_"Don't go anywhere, I'm coming over,"_ Seth deflated his enthusiasm. She showed up in less time that sister Roberta needed to put together a viable justification for what happened.

"What did you change, dear?" Seth asked.

"I think it was this dial, it looks like I pushed the magnetic field all the way into the maximum range."

"So you basically pulled Jimmy into hyperspace?" Seth elaborated, strangely calm. Sister Roberta didn't answer, trying to assess all the potential risks and safety violations. Seth was waiting, tense, staring intently.

"The energy field is too small to move him more than five hundred feet, although he could have landed in the water," the puzzled sister continued her train of thought, tone deaf of the fact that she wasn't really helping her argument.

Sarah and Jenna arrived at the scene while Roberta was still trying to put together a plausible theoretical model. Jenna quietly exchanged a few grimaces with Jimmy who was bursting with giggles but tried to keep quiet.

"Have you seen Solomon?" Sarah asked.

"Oh, so you think this is funny, don't you?" sister Roberta commented, offended.

"I'm sorry, sister, I couldn't help it," Sarah apologized, still laughing, and threw a pear at Jimmy, who caught it and started munching quietly, absorbed in the drama of the moment and following it like an action movie.

Solomon sketched a tentative meow from the top of the equalizer, then started grooming his back leg, managing to maintain his body in equilibrium in complete defiance of the laws of physics. Sister Roberta continued her internal scientific analysis.

"I stand corrected, Jimmy couldn't have landed in the water, apparently everything on the island comes out of hyperspace on this equalizer," she said, picking up Solomon, a few conch shells, a basket of fruit and two spoons from atop the equipment.

"Could you please turn it off, sister?" Seth asked.

"Oh, I'm sorry, was that still on?" sister Roberta turned the dial back down.

"Good thing that we worry about the children playing with your lab equipment," Seth continued. Sister Roberta looked down without answering, so she didn't catch the vindicated look in Jimmy's eyes, innocent whoopee cushion wielding youngster that he was.

"Can I play with the StreamPath now?" Jimmy pushed his luck. Seth's eyes thundered, so he reconsidered.

### Chapter Three

### Of the Effects of Gamma Rays on Infinite Purple

"Are we finally ready?" Seth asked, pushing the muslin curtains to observe the large group of people that had gathered on the shore to witness the first launch. They looked very excited, as always when sister Roberta came up with something new. The kids were more energized than the rest, giggling and shoving each other and rousing unconvincing indignation out of their parents. The latter passively corrected the offending behaviors more out of habit than actual irritation and went right back to staring at sister Novis. She was wrapped in a wet skin tight bodysuit that made her look like a giant seal and tried to fend off nervousness by stretching, bending and twisting, supposedly to warm up for the test.

"Just a second, I need to recalibrate the range," sister Roberta said, fixated on the little dials, completely missing Seth's impatient looks out the window, at her timepiece and at the chaotic movements of the suns. "I'm not sure this is going to work, we could have used another week, you know, just to get it right", sister Roberta continued with great conviction.

"Now you're telling me? You've been working on this for six months and ran the same simulation six hundred and seventy eight times that I know about. Do you want me to go outside and postpone the launch?" Seth asked.

"All set!" sister Roberta shouted, as if the previous conversation never happened. Seth shrugged.

_"Everything is set. Are you ready?"_ she suggested gently to sister Novis.

_"As I'll ever be,"_ the later retorted. Seth could feel the tension in her thoughts, no doubt amplified by the vivid memory of a spectrometer permanently fused to its support.

_"That's not fair!"_ sister Roberta protested, suddenly very sure of herself.

_"Can I play with the StreamPath now?"_ Jimmy's thoughts jumped on top of the pile.

_"Not now, Jimmy!"_ Seth's nerves bounced for a second, then she returned to the launch.

"You're good to go, sister!"

"5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go!" sister Roberta said out loud, despite the fact that there was no way for Novis or the crowd to hear her through the walls.

The crowd watched sister Novis advance slowly into the ocean, which was a little anticlimactic considering the parallel between this fortunate endeavor and a space shuttle launch. The sister jumped forward, was suddenly pulled by a very fast stream and disappeared from sight in a matter of seconds. Roberta felt Novis's rush of adrenaline and instinctively tightened the grip on the controls as if she had to counteract the real pull of the stream, like a captain pushing a rudder against the waves.

_"Stream speed 550 mph, Reynolds number 289. Linear drag, holding. Are you ok, sister?"_ Sister Novis returned a very sharp _"yes"_. The monitoring of her vital functions was registering in the upper range of normal because of the stress, certainly justifiable under the circumstances.

_"That's 100 mph faster than you said, sister!"_ she thought, irritated. Sister Roberta didn't answer, focused on the controls.

_"Approaching boundary, speed 560 mph. Hold steady and gently lift your left arm. I said gently!"_ she snapped. Sister Novis tensed but followed the directions. She swerved out of the water like a dolphin, which would have delighted the viewers if she weren't already a few hundred miles out of sight, and fell almost without sound into another stream, getting a little whiplashed from the unexpected change in speed.

_"Sister, are you trying to kill me?!"_ she protested.

_"Stream speed 470mph, Reynolds number 312,"_ Roberta continued, unperturbed. _"Are you happy now? You've reached the right speed!"_ she asked the fuming Novis. _"Just keep calm, you'll be at your destination soon."_

_"I can see the shore, I'm slowing down,"_ said Novis _. "100mph, 50, 12, 5, I'm out."_ She reached down to touch the silty bottom of the ocean, no more than two feet under her torso, crouched and got up.

_"Did you check the coordinates?"_ sister Roberta asked.

_"Yes, just as planned."_ The island was glowing in the sunset, rosy and golden and covered with palm trees. Cockatoos and monkeys were making a racket in the branches above, drowning the soft swoosh of the waves with their screeching cries.

***

"Can I play with the _StreamPath_ now?" Jimmy asked again in a tiny voice, soft as a marshmallow, hoping that the sweetness of his tone might entice Seth, Sarah, Roberta, or any one of the other sisters to give in to the request. He was so eager to try this new and exciting game and he had seen it so many times he could almost run it in his mind, every detail perfect! _"Grown-ups have no sense of adventure!"_ he thought. He wanted to prove Seth wrong, he just knew he could do it as well as sister Novis, if not better!

"No, Jimmy. I'm sorry!" Seth said, feeling kind of bad about it. "I'll ask Roberta to make some changes so you guys can play with it. Reducing the speed, for one. Have a little patience, ok?"

Reducing the speed? What fun would that be, they already had the roller coasters, the waterfalls, the space jumps, the speed skating. Nothing was as fast as the _StreamPath_ and he really, really wanted to be the first to try it.

"But sister, please, just this once, just for a little bit, it is so much fun!" he pleaded.

"Jimmy, I said no." The conversation was over and there was no appeal. Jimmy mumbled something and went outside to let his disappointment smolder on the beach. The suns were at high noon, making every spec of sand sparkle. The light glimmered on the water, so appealing that little Jimmy's gaze got lost far away into the distance in a daydream of speedy waves, glorious valiance and endless bragging rights.

"Wanna play catch?" a familiar voice resonated behind him. Jimmy shook his head, disheartened. Jenna sat down to keep him company, she had gotten bored inside the house and was happy to see her friend.

"What is it, Jimmy?" she asked.

"The _StreamPath_ , they won't let me play with it. Why can't they understand that I'm really good at it, I watched it so many times!"

Jenna empathized, she knew how stuck-up grown-ups could be. Her mother wouldn't even let her make cupcakes, everything had to be sooo perfect!

"It's not like you are going to be in the REAL ocean, we can always stop the program if anything goes wrong," she said. Jimmy stared deeply into her eyes, entranced by the sudden revelation.

"You wouldn't dare!" Jenna gasped. "If anybody finds out you will be grounded for a week, no, a month, what am I saying, forever! Besides, you need a bodysuit!"

"Sister Novis is not that tall, her suit will do!"

"She is twice your size, you'll drown in it. Even if it did you any good, how are you going to get it?" she asked.

"Don't you need some additional clarification about the metabolic rates of the stinging nettles? I'm sure that if you can't find Sarah, sister Novis will be happy to help you."

"Oh, no, I'm not getting involved in this, what if something happens to you?" Jenna protested implausibly.

"Common, Jenna, you know how good I am, they will never let me try it, what could possibly happen, I can't even sink, remember?"

After a few more minutes of coordination the fiendish plan was outlined with all its details addressed and synchronized to the second. Jenna got her clarification on the metabolic rates of the stinging nettles and Jimmy successfully procured for himself sister Novis's body suit, a little long in the limbs but perfectly usable. To Jimmy's credit, he took into consideration the wild effects that the flopping "flippers" of extra-long sleeves and pants could have at that speed and adjusted the suit around his body with duct tape until he achieved the perfect fluid-dynamic shape required for the feat.

"Here we go," he said, and that's the last Jenna heard from him before the swift waters pulled him in.

Jimmy was ecstatic, what a rush this was, how cool, oh, just wait until he told his friends, whoo! The stream carried him faster and faster, and if the maps he studied while hidden in the lab served him right, heading northwest, to an island with a large zoo filled with strange animal hybrids that he heard about but had never seen.

The suns were shining so brightly they hurt his eyes and he got this idea to flip over and see what was on the ocean floor. The stream was carrying him at almost five hundred miles per hour and flashes of purple sparked before his eyes, moving and rearranging in different patterns, like a beautiful mobile painting. He got scared at first, fearing the suns' intensity damaged his eyes, but when he calmed down he noticed that the purple patches were real, very intense and iridescent in the sunlight, glowing with a light of their own. They were everywhere, as far as he could tell, covering the bottom of the ocean in vast colonies, like indigo snow dusting the underwater landscape.

"Jimmy, you're in so much trouble! Don't make any plans for the next month, you are grounded! Actually make that two months. And no VR privileges for six!"

The verbal scolding rudely pulled Jimmy out of his reverie.

"Do you have any idea where you are? Listen to your neural interlink, Jimmy, are you listening?"

"Yes, sister."

"What does it say?"

"17.75°21' N, 226.61°20'E"

"Follow the current until it drops you off. We'll pick you up in six hours. Oh, by the way, Jenna is grounded too, so you know."

***

Jimmy carried out his chastisement with stoic decorum, he even offered to do Jenna's chores for her, to make up for the misfortune of the extended punishment which the little girl brought up at every opportunity. He tried very hard to stay out of trouble and never asked about the _StreamPath_ again. (after all he had braved the real streams of the ocean, how cool was he!)

Anyway, he started gravitating around Sarah's herbalist shop in order to keep out of sight. He liked spending time there for two reasons: she didn't go on and on about the error of his ways and all the cats were gathered there. He was done sorting the lab glassware and was looking for reasons to linger around the shop a little longer.

"I put away the flasks, sister, what should I do next?"

"Nothing, Jimmy, we're done. Do you want to help me record the DNA sequence of this fungus? I would like to teach you guys how to synthesize antibiotics next week."

"It's purple," Jimmy noticed, "just like the bean plant."

"Yes", Sarah nodded, "it is purple, but it's not like the bean plant."

"Not immortal, you mean."

"That's right. There is only one shimmery square foot of immortals, that's the entire population."

"What about the purple dust in the ocean?"

_"What purple dust in the ocean_?" Seth asked through the neural interlink. The sisters quit every activity and gave the conversation their undivided attention.

_"There is a ton of it, the entire ocean floor is covered in it, I thought you knew,"_ answered Jimmy.

_"Nobody ever looked down?"_ Seth asked, finding it hard to believe that they've all been oblivious to such a widespread phenomenon. The sisters pondered for a while, bewildered.

_"Good job on your plausible story about the square foot, Sarah, it flies in the face of every evolutionary law ever postulated,"_ Seth snapped at the redhead.

_"You didn't question it when there was no evidence to the contrary,"_ Sarah protested.

_"That didn't make your theory valid, though,"_ Seth just had to have the last word. Sarah let it go.

_"Of course they are in the ocean, that makes perfect sense, why didn't we think of it before?"_ she thought.

***

"Make arrangements with sisters Joseph, Jesse and Benedict, we're going to explore the purple fields. Figure out the equipment with Novis and Roberta and let me know when we're ready to go," Seth ordered as she passed through Sarah's shop on her way to the meteorological station. She didn't stop or address her directly, just kept going, busy as always.

_"Heaven forbid somebody said please or thank you in this blessed group,"_ Sarah thought to herself.

_"Please? Thank you."_ Seth replied from a distance.

They started out early in the morning, each fitted with one of sister Roberta's magnetic gravity devices to help with their descent to the bottom of the ocean.

_"We are going to try and slip under the currents, I don't want us to get too far if we can help it."_ The light bounced off the shimmery purple floor, diffracting in a liquid whose density increased to reach the thickness of honey the closer they got to the bottom. The group advanced slowly through the dense matter which yielded and became more fluid with their passing. Sister Joseph stopped watching the randomly changing patterns and couldn't take her eyes off one of the members in the discovery party (she guessed it was Sarah), who was stirring up a real light show as she floated above the purple ground.

_"So help me, is that you, Sarah?"_ she asked.

Sarah lifted her head and waved in acknowledgement.

_"If I didn't know any better I'd think they recognized you,"_ sister Joseph offered, unconvinced.

Everyone stopped to watch Sarah light up the ocean floor like a gigantic electronic display when she floated over it, a luminous carpet that reflected her every move, shadow, and propagating wave.

Sarah swung her arm in different sequences of sharp and slow moves and the floor rendered them into similar recognizable patterns. She paused and the floor paused with her, softening its shimmering purple to the deepest indigo.

_"Do you think it's sentient?"_ sister Jesse asked.

_"I think it's trying to communicate with us,"_ Seth said, stunned. _"It's been waiting right under our noses for one hundred and ninety four years, how dense can we be!"_

_"Not with us, haven't you noticed?"_ sister Joseph pointed out the obvious. _"They are trying to communicate with Sarah, they must think she's one of them."_

***

"So, what do you think?" Seth asked, keenly curious.

"It's like a brain..., it is a brain, actually...well, it works like one, sort of..., very large...," Sarah hesitated, speaking as she developed her thoughts. "Do you see the movement of electrons in this area?" she pointed to a zone in the section of ocean floor that sister Roberta had modeled in the lab using real time images. An artificial remote controlled _'Sarah'_ complete with Sarah's hybrid purple/human cells mimicked the redhead's movements on the bottom of the ocean. Her right arm moved and a distinct area lit up.

"I don't think this is an autonomous brain, I think it reflects yours. Sister Roberta, can you model Sarah's brain functions for us really quickly?" Sister Roberta diligently obliged. An almost identical pattern emerged, placed next the other one for side by side comparison.

"This must be the primary motor cortex," Sarah said, fascinated.

"Ok, so at least we know not to waste out time charting its patterns, apparently we already have them." Sarah remembered her unauthorized brain scan and frowned imperceptibly at sister Roberta. The latter ignored her, focused as she was on keeping the wavelengths free of interference. "Why is it reflecting your neurological activity?"

"It must be resonance," Sarah said, unconvinced.

"You mean they hum?" Seth asked. "They are still individual specimens, ant colony or not, it doesn't make any sense."

"Now that you mentioned ants, they communicate through chemical signals. Do you think this might be the case here?"

"Not easily accomplished in a viscous liquid, it would be too inefficient."

"Long waves would encounter too much interference also, it must be something much faster, like light."

"If it were light we'd see it, I should be glowing or something." Sister Roberta set aside an inside joke for later and chose philosophical silence.

"X-rays?" asked Seth.

"Ultraviolet light?" replied Sarah.

"Sister," Seth turned around to Roberta. "What kind of wavelength would be the most efficient at carrying signal through this medium?" Sister Roberta hesitated, watching incredulously as the theoretical model zoomed quickly through the wavelengths between 10 and 0.0001 nm and stopped somewhere towards the low end of the range.

"This isn't possible!" she gasped.

"What isn't, sister?" Sarah asked. Sister Roberta restarted the modeling, running it a couple more times to confirm the findings.

"In a typical organism this would engender too many DNA mutations to allow it to function, I guess this explains the incessant monitoring and cellular repair. Sarah, I don't know what this means but you are emitting gamma rays. A very low rem range, it seems like, and we're obviously unaffected, otherwise we'd have noticed it by now."

"I'm going to trust that you have very good reasons to propose this theory, sister, and I'm not going to ask you if you are sure," Seth commented softly.

"I don't think it is an intrinsic quality of their bio-chemical makeup either, otherwise they would interact with all of us," sister Roberta hesitated.

"What is it then?" asked Seth.

"Sentience," said Roberta simply.

"Ok, so let's go back to our premise. How does it work?" continued the leader calmly, as if she asked what's for dinner. Sarah stared at her with a combination of admiration and astonishment.

_"This is categorically not normal, you'd think I would be able to take a second to adapt to the concept of being electro-magnetically charged,"_ Sarah thought. _"What would it take to disturb you, really?"_

_"You're fine, aren't you? This happened a long time ago, anyway, if you didn't take a breather then you surely don't need one now,"_ Seth conceded a comment, then continued aloud.

"So, how does it work?"

"Do you know those toys with pins that mold around a 3d object to replicate its shape? Something like that, maybe, only I can't figure out why," sister Roberta answered tentatively.

"You think it's initiating communication or just reacting?" the leader asked. Sister Roberta shrugged, searching for an answer. Seth got up and looked at the little purple carpet patch whose undulating glow seemed completely random.

"Sarah, do you want to try?" Seth asked. "They seem to like you."

_"Colonize me would be the more appropriate term,"_ Sarah grumbled.

"Just try, please?" Seth pleaded with unusual sweetness.

"How?" the redhead asked.

"Surprise me," the leader retorted.

Sarah stared intently at the indigo field, without a word.

"What are you doing?" Seth asked, curious.

"I'm telling it to blink if it can understand me," answered Sarah very seriously.

"Great, we're doing a séance! I expect to see my breath any moment now!"

"Do you have another idea?" Sarah asked.

"No, go ahead."

All three of them stared at the little purple patch for a whole half hour, feeling more and more dim-witted as time passed, to the absolute delight of the school children who relished witnessing the grown-ups act so bizarre.

At the end of this focused brainstorming session the leader got up and left without looking back, furious at herself for having wasted her time with such absurdities. The little purple carpet shimmered gently, unperturbed.

"Maybe it doesn't understand your request. If it asked you to hum in a specific nm range would you be able to comply?" proposed sister Roberta.

"If I ask it to hum in a specific nm range, would it be able to comply?" Sarah offered back.

"Try 0.0013 nm," suggested sister Roberta.

The shimmery field adjusted suddenly as soon as the thought of the wavelength of 0.0013nm formed on Sarah's cortex.

"Do you think this was it or you?" sister Roberta asked.

"I have absolutely no idea!" Sarah answered, more confused than ever.

### Chapter Four

### Of Code, Chemistry and Music

Sarah stirred the oily liquid in the test tube. As she absentmindedly looked out through the louvered walls of her shop the liquid turned from bright pink to magenta and lavender, then cerulean blue and finally bright lime green, glowing diffusely as the sunlight passed through it.

_"What? Darn!"_ Sarah thought. _"This is the third batch this afternoon!"_ All around her lay small and large vials of liquids and salts, spoons, glass stirrers, pipettes, and titration paper.

"Looks like you need to adjust the pH of that solution," Seth suggested, amused. "What could possibly distract you to such a degree that you can't get the pH right for, what is that, shampoo?" she joked.

"Skin cleanser, actually," Sarah continued. "Do you think they are sentient?"

Seth frowned deeply, still annoyed with the neo-mesmerist sessions that made them look ridiculous in front of the children.

"We managed to create some interesting stuff around here for quite a long time before Jimmy blessed us with this discovery and now nobody does anything anymore, we all stare at purple goo. Heck, you can't even make shampoo, how sad is that?"

"Skin cleanser," Sarah clarified. "And it's immortal goo. Don't you want to know? There, I got it!" Sarah lifted the test tube with aqua blue-violet liquid in it. "5.6 pH, perfect!"

"Of course I do, if nothing else to get this out of our heads so we can focus on our tasks. Just because it's immortal it doesn't mean it's self-aware. What if we're wasting all of our time watching ourselves in the mirror?" Seth shuffled, restless, then sat down on one of the built-in benches along the louvered wall. The breeze brought in fragrance from a nearby mock-orange and mixed it with the scent of lavender from the bunches Sarah had hung from the rafters to dry. The low afternoon suns wrapped everything in mellow light, as if to suggest to slow down and enjoy living.

_"You don't like not knowing, do you?"_ Sarah thought. Seth didn't answer, but the redhead felt her uneasiness with the subject.

"How is the density catalyst coming?" the former changed the subject.

"Fine, I gave Roberta the formula, she is testing it right now. We have to figure out how to communicate with them, if it's possible, how could we not?" Sarah continued.

"Yes, of course," Seth answered and left. The conversation annoyed her.

Sarah placed one of her fingers under the tissue scanner and turned up the magnification to zoom in really close on one of the immortals; the lobster like creature stared back at her. It seemed impossible for the species to just exist, unaware, she could swear that one of the beady lobster eyes winked at her from the safe distance of its microscopic size.

She spent a few hours not even noticing how time passed, trying to imagine what, if anything, was this life form's reasoning process, how they conjured up meaning, how they took in reality, did they had senses, and if so, how different they were from hers, would she be able to even understand them, or conversely would they be able to process what it meant to see, hear, feel? How does one communicate with something so fundamentally different from oneself? For all she knew the only thing they had in common was being alive. She watched the little creatures go about their business, processing boron and assisting in the catabolism of sugars. Their behavior was so similar to that of bacteria that the simple concept of their colonies being able to replicate her brain activity seemed surreal.

***

"You want to teach them machine code?!!" Roberta blurted, shocked. "Do you know machine code?" she asked.

"That's were you come in," Sarah elaborated, persuasively.

Roberta paused to reflect and Sarah couldn't hide a little triumphant smile: the sister was hooked.

_"Don't look so pleased with yourself, I'm not sure we can do this, but I'll put something together,"_ sister Roberta continued her train of thought. _"Making them distinguish between two different wavelengths is the easy part, making them understand the patterns of zeros and ones are not random is also easy. Turning this gibberish into a language, that's impossible!"_

"Difficult, not impossible."

_"Right. Besides, we might be able to program them, but not talk to them. Now go away, I need to think!"_ sister Roberta sent Sarah off abruptly.

***

"So we're basically trying to turn a cell culture into a CPU?" Seth asked.

"Not exactly, we are trying to train a system that works like a neural network to form permanent pathways, like teaching a baby to talk," said Sarah.

"Babies come with a built-in compiler, this colony does not."

"How do you know?" asked Roberta.

"Why don't you try and find out? Just because they can process the frequency sequence and spit out a result it doesn't mean they're answering."

"You underestimate the wild card, they are not objects, they are alive. Life is intended to evolve."

"Speaking of life, you may want to consider a non-binary code, they can make more than one connection at a time, like chemical bonds," offered Sarah.

"How many?" sister Roberta asked.

"I don't know for sure, they form closed loops like benzene, try four," the redhead answered tentatively.

"So, we're going to sing to them?" Jimmy interjected. Sister Roberta sighed, resigned. There was absolutely no way to keep Jimmy out of her hair, no way at all. _"I am considering a force field, Jimmy!",_ she thought. Jimmy looked at his shoes and whined in protest, but stood his ground.

"I'll spend some time creating an audible range translator for the gamma radiation sequences, we might as well hear what we're playing to them, speaking of sharing experiences. That's going to be quite the symphonic piece, I tell you!"

***

_"Ok, my little microscopic friends,"_ thought sister Roberta. " _Two frequencies, four covalent bonds."_

_"Hey, don't start yet, wait for me, I'll be right over!"_ exclaimed Sarah. _"I want to hear what cyclohexane_ _sounds like!"_ She ran to the lab as fast as she could and slowed down to a screeching halt in front of sister Roberta's musical machine almost knocking over little Jimmy who was there as always.

"Here is the score!" said Roberta.

"Wow, this is so cool!! Can I..."

_"No, Jimmy! I promise I'll let you play with it later,"_ sister Roberta negotiated, hoping that would be enough to buy her a few minutes of uninterrupted work.

"This little jingle is an executable, I trust you're not telling them to dissolve and digest us," Sarah joked, "What does it mean?" she asked.

"qCf, NIY, AIY, qIq," Roberta said, "in harmony."

_"Why would you send a message that makes no sense?"_ Seth intervened through the neural interlink.

_"What difference does it make? We don't even know if they can notice the sequence is not random,"_ answered Roberta, somewhat displeased.

"If we happen to be able to make up a language we both understand are these the first words you'd like them to hear?" asked Sarah, gesturing vehemently to a very excited Jimmy who was on the verge of overturning a whole table full of equipment. The little boy managed to recover his balance at the last minute; the paraphernalia swayed for a second, then settled.

"What would you have me say?" asked Roberta.

"How about _'We love you?'_ " asked Sarah.

"That is so trite!", Roberta shuddered with indignation.

_"I'm not declaring my undying affection to a bacterial culture!"_ exploded Seth through the interlink.

_"They are not bacteria! If you need an incentive please remember they are the reason we are still alive. On Earth we'd be potting clay by now,"_ Sarah answered.

_"I'm only two hundred and twenty seven, medicine advances,"_ the leader started to protest.

_"Not that fast,"_ Sarah ended the conversation. "Ok, sister, send the gibberish, let's see where this is going!", she conceded.

The sound/gamma ray machine executed the little jingle to the delight of Jimmy, who thought it was hilarious, and the cats, who ceased all activity and focused intently on the source of the sound. Solomon started purring and rubbed his head against the player, making little sounds in order to be acknowledged. The purple carpet glittered randomly for a second then varied its velvety surface like a field of wheat in the wind.

"Do you think they noticed us?" whispered Sarah.

"I don't know," Roberta said. "Should I try again?" Just when Roberta was getting ready to restart the sequence the little patch glimmered lavender and deep purple in a graceful rhythm.

"They're responding in the visual range. What did they say?" Sarah jumped, with breathless anticipation.

"qCf, NI and half a Y," said Roberta.

"Garbage in, garbage out!" laughed Sarah.

"They reflect, not respond." Roberta said, disappointed.

***

"Jenna, return to your table, please. Lily, are you done with the centrifuge?" Sarah asked.

"Yes, sister," said the latter.

"Can you guess what molecule these atoms belong to?" Sarah asked the group. She input a couple of lines in the VR program, then waved her hands and picked five hydrogen and three carbon atoms out of thin air; she whirled them around gently as if swishing water in a tub to make them revolve and rotate around each other. The empty orbitals swiveled like magnets, attracted to the electrons available for sharing, then shifted around, unconvinced, lacking a stable charge-neutral configuration. One methane molecule started coagulating and Sarah poked it with her pointer to make it dissipate. "There are atoms missing, of course, but which ones?"

"Are we allowed to use nitrogen?" asked Lily. Tommy grimaced behind her. _"Teacher's pet!"_ he thought. _"She always has to show off!"_

_"I heard that, Tommy, that was not very nice!"_ Sarah quietly admonished him. "Do you want to give it a try?" she asked him aloud.

"Oxygen?" he said.

"Very good guesses, both of them, these are the building blocks of life, you can bet if there is an organic substance, especially the wonderful stuff we're all made of, these four atoms will probably be there. Let's add a nitrogen and an oxygen atom and see what happens." Sarah threw the atoms into the mix with bombastic gestures, she loved to watch the grins on the kids' faces when she played magician. The atoms snapped into place immediately, like a magneto game, leaving an empty double bond yet to be filled.

Jesse, a fair skinned boy with raven black hair, generated a little background entertainment by making three giant test tubes twirl around in pink tutus and accompany Sarah's movements with little approving nods. The children giggled. Encouraged, Jesse started a little trickle out of one of the tubes, which whimpered, embarrassed, and hid behind their teacher.

"Jesse, when you're done disturbing the class can you complete the configuration?" asked Sarah unperturbed.

Jesse threw another oxygen atom at the puzzle, very sure of himself.

"Very good, what is it?" Sarah asked.

"Dehydroalanine," he answered.

"Hold that thought. What other possibilities can you think of?"

"Two hydrogen atoms?" the little boy asked.

"And that would make?" Sarah anticipated.

"Propionamide", said Jesse.

"And?" asked Sarah.

"And oxazolidine", swallowed Jesse, uncomfortable.

"And?" asked Sarah.

"Dimethylformamide", whimpered the youngster, fretting.

"And?" asked Sarah, mercilessly.

Jesse shrugged and looked down, annoyed.

"There are two more, 1-amino-2-propanone and isoxazolidine, we'll get back to this another time", Sarah ended the inquiry.

_"Let's hope not,"_ thought Jesse.

"Back to the first molecule, do you know what it is?" Sarah asked.

"It is a rare unsaturated amino-acid found mostly in bacteria," Lily jumped in.

_"It's a rare unsaturated amino-acid,"_ Jesse mocked her, but got caught in Sarah's gaze and said noting. The redhead continued.

"I promised I'd show you an antibiotic and here it is. Now, everybody please create your own experiments starting with the same eight atoms and figure out how many different molecules you can make out of them. Jimmy, I can see you!"

Jimmy fumbled to get rid of the prickly balloon he was about to throw at Lily's sugar molecule and asked a decoy question to get himself out of trouble.

"So, did they answer, sister?"

"Who, the purple goo?" she asked. "No, Jimmy, not yet."

"Are they made like us?" the little boy asked.

"You mean the same chemical composition? They are a bit different, their genetic make-up incorporates a lot of germanium."

"What did you tell them?" Jimmy asked. Sarah frowned when she remembered the gibberish.

"Not a real message, really, we just wanted to see if they'd react. Have you found all the possible molecules you can think of?" the redhead attempted to continue the exercise.

"Can we practice with Germanium, please, can we, can we?"

"Go ahead if you wish but you're not going to get as many configurations, it is a little heavy."

"Do you think this is what their genes look like?" Lily weaved a complex cat's cradle of covalent bonds, infinitely linked in a gracefully rhythmic pattern.

"Not exactly, Lily, they are more like this," Sarah forgot for a second that she was teaching an introductory class and started painting an elaborate tapestry of what looked vaguely like amino-acids, twisting around a triple helix that went on indefinitely. The kids breathed a sigh of relief; every time they managed to divert her from the lesson plan into her own work it was like early dismissal.

"Can we see them again, please?" the kids whined. This was the hundredth time they had asked Sarah to do this but she didn't mind. She brought out from the database an image of an immortal and zoomed in until she reached cellular and then molecular level.

"It's alive!" Jesse gasped, startled by a sudden movement of the triple looped genetic strand.

"Of course it's alive, they don't die," said Sarah.

"I didn't think we'd watch them move around," Jesse hesitated, still a little apprehensive. "Can you ask them why they live underwater?"

"I'll put the question on the list for when we can communicate with them. Can we go back to the lesson, please?" Three little pigs paraded between Sarah and her pupils, dancing on their hind legs and playing an oboe, an accordion and a violin. "Great, saved by the bell!" Sarah said. "I'll see you next...Tuesday." The shop was already vacated, except for Jimmy, who was trying to remain unnoticed behind the distillation apparatus.

"You are not playing with the gamma ray machine in my lab, Jimmy, might as well go home," Sarah said.

Jimmy got up, disheartened, and dragged his feet out of the shop.

### Chapter Five

### Of Conversation and Cultural Differences

Lily and Jimmy were absolutely thrilled. After many unsuccessful attempts to communicate with the microscopic locals the sisters gave up on their musical bit generator and decided to take a break to ponder a different approach. Sister Roberta handed the machine to the children who proudly took possession of it immediately, eager to try it out. They played the little jingle so many times inside Roberta's lab that the latter, in a moment of human weakness, suggested that the sound quality and her mental health would benefit greatly if they moved the circus outside and took the gizmo with them. Lily and Jimmy obliged, relieved to be out of sight and get first dibs on the coveted article.

"I thought you said I could try it first!" Lily jumped. Jimmy yielded and watched her turn the dials to listen to the now so familiar music for the hundredth time. The children were sitting on the beach at the edge of the water and Jimmy, who had just discovered a passion for "speaking" binary code, was generating score after score of sheet music with the weirdest messages, like "Do you like raspberries?" and "My sister's name is Lisa."

"They don't care, Jimmy! They can't even understand you!" Lily said with an all knowing smirk.

"How do you know, just because everybody says..." Jimmy continued his sequence of communications, more stubborn than ever. Lily rolled her eyes but gave up, typing the pointless messages into the machine.

"Would you like to ask them if they want to play hopscotch too?" she asked, sarcastically.

Jimmy didn't answer and continued writing down feverishly every crazy thought that passed through his creative little head. He kept writing and writing and after a while Lily protested that she should get to send messages too, so she told the immortals that she aced her chemistry quiz and that she was a great swimmer and that she had a tortoise shell cat named Ella, who was two. She told them she liked black cherry ice cream and salad, but not if it had any spinach at all, and definitely hated parsley.

After a few days Jenna figured out the gig and the three started this little secret club: they met every day to write about their lives, likes and dislikes, happenings at school, whether they were happy or sad, who they befriended or argued with that day, and then entrusted their thoughts and wishes to the ocean in binary jingles like digital messages in a bottle. The club grew slowly, first with Tommy, then Jesse, then a dozen other children who fed their hopes and dreams to the restless waters, their plans for the future and their disappointments, their laughter and their tears.

They forgot they were supposed to wait for an answer and turned this experience into a collective diary, a sequence of snapshots of their enchanted childhood. Months passed, then years, they grew into their tweens but never abandoned their private conversations with the ever patient ocean who didn't talk back but made for a great nonjudgmental listener.

One morning Jimmy woke up early, he had tons of homework and a lot on his mind. He wanted to spend a few minutes alone and he went to the beach to gather his thoughts. Out of habit he wrote a couple of sentences and sent them to the waves. The ocean was moving slowly, concealing strong currents under the quiet mirror of its surface. Everything was still, no macaw squawks, no swish of ships, when the immortals threw their soft breathy voice across the waters and whispered "Hi. Jimmy."

***

_"What was that?"_ Seth jumped from her sleep, alerting the sisters.

_"Did they speak?"_ Sarah continued, besides herself with excitement. _"Jimmy, where are you?"_

_"On the beach. I'm not exactly sure what happened..."_ hesitated the boy.

The sisters joined him moments later at the edge of the water trying to figure out where to take the experiment from here.

"Sister," the ocean whispered, softly, almost inaudibly.

"I think it means you, Sarah," Seth offered.

"Love. Sister." the ocean spoke again.

"Do you think they can understand speech? It looks like they can dial down the frequency to the audible range," said Sarah.

"Answer them," Seth urged her.

"I love you too," Sarah said. Her heartfelt message generated an irritated sigh and an eye roll from sister Joseph. Time accentuates personality traits and more time accentuates them more deeply. Two hundred years managed to bring out whatever aspects of sister Joseph's scrappy personality managed to stay hidden during her earlier days.

"Jimmy. Raspberries."

"Yes, Jimmy loves raspberries."

"Raspberries. What."

"They are fruit, food."

"Boron. Sugar."

"Yes, like that."

"Live. Length."

"How long do we live? Normally around 120 Earth years, that is around 324 planet rotations, but now with our symbiotic relationship with you we're not sure anymore. How long do you live?"

"Not. Know. Sister. Sanctuary."

"I apologize, I didn't know at the time, you got absorbed through my skin."

"More. Sanctuary."

"Yes, there are two more beings in direct symbiotic relationship with you: my cat Solomon and a bean plant," answered Sarah.

"Cat. What. Bean. What."

Solomon came quickly, as if summoned, and started pawing at Sarah's legs until the latter picked him up and started petting him.

"This is Solomon, my cat. Bean is a plant." Sarah graciously introduced the purring feline and tried to picture the purple bean plant as clearly as her mind allowed it.

"Cat. Sister. Bean. Sister." said the ocean. "Love. Cat. Love. Bean. Sister." it continued like a chatterbox, relieving the frustration of so many years of silence and watching these weird looking gigantic conquistadors move around the planet completely oblivious to their sentience.

"I think they assumed sister means family," sister Joseph mumbled under her breath.

"No. Sister. Sarah. Sister." the ocean contradicted her immediately. Joseph didn't get the language nuance, since what she had assumed made perfect sense, but she didn't feel comfortable talking to this single word sentence chatterbox, it made her feel ridiculous. She envied Sarah for the ease with which she could make a complete fool of herself at every opportunity, not everybody was born with the complete lack of social awareness that would facilitate such a diminished capacity for embarrassment. Seth stopped the mental ramble in its tracks with a few well seasoned unspoken commentaries. Lately sister Joseph could go on and on for hours in the absence of appropriate backstops.

"Love. Sister." the ocean ordered, strangely assertive.

"Well, you got your knight in shining armor, aren't you special!" mumbled sister Joseph more morose than ever.

"Love. Sister." said the ocean again, more assuaged.

"How do you know they didn't mean the cat?" asked Seth, yielding to logic.

"Same brains," sister Joseph continued with her well known good natured attitude.

"Jimmy. Love." said the ocean. "Hopscotch. Dehydroalanine." the ocean continued. "Jenna. Love. Lily. Love."

"Great, they love everybody! This should serve as a lesson to all of you about what happens when you put the airhead in charge of communications," sister Joseph continued to grumble. "I'm not sure what she's growing in that garden, but it sure makes her chipper," she suggested.

Sarah breathed a sigh of relief realizing that under different circumstances the first words the immortals could have learned might have been _'useless'_ and _'yakking'._

***

Seth was pacing around the shop, tense, one could almost feel the strain between her shoulder blades contract the muscles on the back of her neck like those of a large cat ready to pounce.

"What is it? You are making me dizzy," Sarah asked.

"What are we going to do next?" Seth replied.

"In relation to what?" Sarah elaborated.

"In general," Seth continued.

"There is no such thing," Sarah responded. "In general we should be long dead by now, resting in peace atop a gentle hill not too far from where we were born with a heartfelt epitaph pointing out we were great family members and would be sorely missed."

"Speak for yourself, I would have gone out in smoke and ashes, my family would definitely insist on that, it is tradition," Seth laughed, a little more relaxed.

"But I always thought..." Sarah exclaimed, puzzled.

"Don't ask! It's too complicated," Seth dismissed the query.

"The answer to your immediate question is that I am going to finish the fractional distillation of this bowl of tarry muck into something that smells like vanilla and something else that smells like lily of the valley. Why the existential angst?" the redhead prodded along.

"I am supposed to mentor Lily in a choice of career, whatever that means, and I don't know what to tell her. I really didn't make any plans when I came here, mostly because I thought terra forming will be enough work for eight or nine decades."

"And this is a bad thing?" Sarah asked, slightly amused.

"No, I just didn't make any plans," Seth continued with a forlorn look in her eyes.

"We went through a couple of centuries without this being an issue. Why now, Mother Superior?" Sarah continued drilling her mentor with a smile on her face.

Seth was startled by the title, she rarely thought of herself as such but they were a religious order after all and she was its head.

"Oh, go ahead, rub it in!" she said, betrayed. "Nobody has all the answers, leader or not!" she continued. "Why don't you mentor Lily, you seem contented enough?"

"She could try every trade until she found something she liked and still have centuries worth of fruitful career. Why the pressure to make the right choice? There is no right choice, just living."

"You wouldn't be happy in a field other than bio-chemistry, doesn't she deserve guidance that allows her to develop her talents?" asked Seth.

"How do you know? Maybe I am a blend of my father's, aunts' and mother's wishes and dreams. Maybe if I were born in Bonn I'd be a violinist."

"You can't carry a tune!" Seth commented.

"Details," Sarah said.

"She wants to be great at everything, I worry she seeks to excel for others and not for herself, if I ask her whether she likes a subject she will always say yes," said the former.

"Then don't ask," Sarah followed, completely unperturbed. "How is she going to know if she wants to be an engineer? She can't know what an engineer is or does until she is one. Do you think I grew up wishing to join a religious order?" she asked rhetorically.

"I actually believe that you did," Seth pressed the point. "Didn't you go on and on about your aunts and the convent and the cloistered garden?"

"Well, then, we should let Lily's childhood experiences mold her future choices," Sarah followed logically.

"And become a doctor-teacher-painter-athlete-physicist?" Seth asked.

"What did you want to be growing up?" Sarah asked.

"A ballerina," Seth said, pinning Sarah down with a stare that didn't leave room for amusing commentary.

"It's never too late..." Sarah pushed with a wry smile. "Anyway, why offer what already is? What if she masters a domain that doesn't exist yet?"

"Maybe experience binds my perspective. Speaking of life choices, I seem to have a lot of free time lately, I thought about getting a hobby."

"What did you have in mind?" Sarah asked, curious.

"I'll develop the language," Seth tried to dilute the subject.

"The language?" Sarah jumped.

"It would be nice, don't you think? Speaking in sentences, using grammar..."

"So much for career advice! I don't think microscopic immortal linguistics was on Lily's list of options. Do you want me to talk to sister Roberta about it?" Sarah tried to anticipate.

"What makes you think I need help?" Seth smiled enigmatically.

Sarah stared into the transparent eyes curious to get more information about the unexpected skill, but their clear mirror-like surfaces didn't let anything through. For once the redhead regretted that their neural interlink bracelets were turned off and she couldn't just go in and grab the details she wanted to know, even at the cost of harsh admonition for rude and intrusive behavior.

***

"They are driving me nuts!" Lily blurted, careful not to raise her voice but definitely annoyed. "Everybody is on my case constantly, I can't breathe a word without advice, I think I got all the help I can take and at this point am seriously considering a ride on one of the currents. Do you know where sister Novis's body suit is?"

Jimmy didn't think she was serious but he listened to the rant like the good friend that he was. They were sitting on the beach, as usual, the beach had become the unofficial children's realm and the grown-ups didn't bother them much there.

"No, I don't. Besides I'm not allowed in the lab, sister Roberta's orders," he responded.

"Ride. Danger. Child." whispered the ocean, soft as a gossamer.

"Great, more babysitters! If the sisters don't offer assistance the immortals will!" Lily continued, even more frustrated. "Why can't anybody leave me alone, over and over with the future and the choosing, like the universe depends on it! If anybody pestered sister Roberta like that she would definitely give them a piece of her mind, just because I'm a child they think they can organize all my life for me!"

"Child. Young. Learn." commented the ocean.

"How would you know? You're not human, you can't understand me!" Lily retorted.

"Life. Young. Teach." it replied.

"I don't care how you teach your young, what does that have to do with me?" the girl yelled back.

"Wait, Lily, I want to know more about this. I didn't know they had children," Jimmy said, curious.

"Life. Start."

"The thought of you starting out, you live forever, I assumed..." Jimmy continued.

"Dark. Gamma. Space." the ocean whispered.

"I don't understand what they're saying," Lily mumbled.

"Time. Back. Long." they answered, strangely contrite.

"I get it, you're old," the girl replied trying to hide her self-consciousness.

"Dark. Gamma. Life." they kept on. "First. Dark."

"There was never dark." Jimmy contradicted them.

"Dark. Long." the ocean insisted. "Gamma. Dark. All. Dark."

"You can't possibly be that old! You were there when the universe began?" Jimmy exclaimed.

"Dark. Long." the immortals continued. "Gamma. Dark. Wave. Capture. Matter. CH3CH3CNH3O2GeO2CH3CH3..." they softly recited the seemingly infinite chain of organic components that constituted their molecular structure. "Wave. Capture. Wave. First. Dark."

"What about your young?" asked Jimmy.

"Parent. Half. Child. Half." the ocean whispered.

"They multiply by cellular division" Lily translated. "That would make the children and the parents the same, I don't see how that could possibly apply to our culture. They don't teach, they duplicate themselves."

"Parent. Knowledge. Child. Knowledge. Division. More. Knowledge. Different. Knowledge." said the ocean. "Neuron. Different."

"You don't have neurons," said Jimmy.

"Chains. Hive. Same." the ocean whispered.

"How young is your youngest?" asked Jimmy.

"Now. Birth." they replied. "Young. Giant. Speak."

"I think they are allocating a portion of their hive to communicate with us, their newborns," Jimmy turned to Lily.

"Many. Speak." the ocean corrected him. "Chains. Microwave. Giants. Slow."

"And this is definitely the low point of my day, a microscopic boron eating bacteria called me slow," Lily threw in the towel.

"Child. Young. Learn." the ocean tried to mollify her. "Gamma. Fast. Sound. Slow."

"So what?" Lily snapped.

"Current. Fast. Girl. Slight. Teach." the ocean doted.

_"What on earth are you two doing?"_ asked Sarah, who had just joined the common conversation as it was time for vespers. The children didn't answer, they just expressed unspoken unease at the intrusion and got up to leave. _"Jimmy, do you want to help me with something?"_ Sarah asked.

_"Yes, sister,"_ the boy answered, grimacing towards Lily to express his frustration as he headed for the shop.

### Chapter Six

### Of Being

Seth kept following the rhythmic sequences of 0s and 1s that moved fast before her eyes; the bits turned into words and pictures, sentence structure diagrams and collections of synonyms, commas and exclamation marks, menus and bubbles, a whole new chamber music user interface written for a gamma radiation string quartet, with octets condensed into measures and harmonized in thirds.

It was strange and wondrous this mainframe generated music, an eerie blend of monotone ison and whale song, melodious and random at the same time. Seth was so transposed by the unearthly series of sounds that her psyche became completely impervious to her surroundings and started existing in a different world, one without scale, without Newtonian physics, floating in an immaterial pattern of vibration and wave interference.

It was so soothing, this music of the spheres, so revealing in ways impossible to explain, that the leader began wondering if her human limitations would ever allow her to perceive the meaning of the overlapping harmonies, if it was even possible for the brain to process them at the same time. She got so humbled by the extraordinary capacity of the immortal colony, this unbounded brain that kept growing in understanding since time began. She wondered how much knowledge was stored in this extraordinary biological machine whose fluid and swift patterns could incorporate anything, including the clunky, inefficient and slow human language, a means of communication that must have seemed to them as effective as carrying water in a sieve.

Uneasiness hit her all of a sudden after all those decades of being afraid of nothing, of challenging the universe as if it were a toy, in the face of this vast benevolent intelligence, so patient with her limitations, so protective, so self-denying that it approached godliness. This intimidated the leader who, for all her audacity, had always yielded to the will of God.

_"Are you making progress?"_ Sarah's thought fell on the silence in the gentlest way but its echo boomed like a cannon inside Seth's altered consciousness. The leader shuddered, jolted.

_"Progress? Yes, I guess so,"_ Seth answered, as if from another world. _"They will certainly understand any language, the most complex system of communication we can come up with at the pinnacle of our civilization, I'm just not sure we will be able to keep pace with it ourselves, it is too much."_

_"What do you mean?"_ Sarah continued prodding, blending the thoughts with the feelings behind them in an attempt to understand what Seth meant. She sensed the awe, the excitement, the uneasiness, pride and exhaustion in a way that made the redhead worry that the leader was at the end of her rope and this mental exercise was going to fry her brain like excess voltage overloads a circuit.

_"Maybe the shorts will increase my brain's efficiency,"_ Seth regained her bearing and sense of humor. It felt as if the room was suddenly filled with static electricity that made their hair stand on end.

_"Can't be that scary,"_ Sarah continued gently.

_"Not to you, I'm sure, flower child. Not all of us are comfortable with this intimate level of understanding, I feel like I'm stripped of my skin."_ Seth frowned.

Sarah stopped for a second to ponder what made Seth think she felt comfortable with her every thought and feeling exposed, it was something she learned to live with after so many decades but not something she would have chosen if asked. It came as a given, it was the rule of their community and equally uncomfortable for everyone concerned. Sister Joseph could be particularly caustic with her unspoken diatribes and one couldn't avoid the disturbing mental imagery they generated, Sarah was sure she could do without those, for instance.

_"I know, I know,"_ the leader conciliated. _"She makes me cringe at times."_

_"That's 'cause you can't tolerate the truth and only talk to the cat-brained kumbaya who thinks what you want to hear!"_ sister Joseph's commentary surfaced immediately, harsh as sandpaper.

_"Thank you, sister Joseph,"_ Seth responded, still retiring before the overwhelming complexity of the language.

_"She's gone off the reservation, for sure!"_ sister Joseph mumbled, morose, then found something else to occupy her attention.

_"Can you listen to this for a second?"_ Seth asked Sarah and set the musical wave generator without waiting for an answer. The eerie music started again, lulling the latter into reverie and a deep peace that seemed to radiate through her skin. She didn't understand the message, of course, but it felt familiar to her, she could almost swear she heard it before, maybe in a dream.

_"What does it mean?"_ she asked, enchanted.

_"It is not a phrase, it's an image, an orange crocus."_ Seth answered eagerly. Sarah kept listening to the picture with a delighted look on her face that made the leader wonder if those microscopic inhabitants that lived on the inside surface of her cells had something to do with it.

_"Cat. Sister."_ the leader joked unconvinced. The redhead's level of comfort with the music of the spheres gave her pause.

***

"Water is blue," said Seth.

"Water. Blue." whispered the ocean softly.

"Is," said Seth.

"Is," answered the ocean.

"Water is blue," repeated the leader.

"Water. Blue." said the ocean.

"Is there something wrong with me? I've been repeating this sentence for the last four hours, I know you can say 'is', why don't you?" she said, exasperated.

"Is," said the ocean.

"Is blue," insisted Seth.

"Is. Blue." said the ocean.

"Water..." said Seth.

"Water." repeated the ocean.

"Water is..." said Seth.

"Water. Is." the ocean continued.

"Water is blue," said Seth.

"Water. Blue." the ocean whispered proudly.

"Sarah! Roberta! Jesse!" Seth screamed.

_"What?"_ they answered through the neural interlink.

_"Come here, please, if they tell me 'water. blue.' one more time I'm going to lose it!"_ the leader thought in response, with a tinge of insanity that let them all know she meant it.

"Maybe they think we use too many words. 'Water. Blue.' is enough to convey meaning," said Roberta.

"Whose side are you on?" Seth jumped, upset.

"Water. Blue." Roberta laughed.

"They don't get verbs, they think all words have the same weight and can be used anywhere in the sentence, I'm not even going to attempt adverbs or conjunctions," said Seth. "What would be the point?"

"What. Point." whispered the ocean.

"You are smart," said Seth. "Why don't you get it?"

"You. Smart." said the ocean.

"Add pronouns to that list," Roberta laughed again.

"I think we are going about this the wrong way. How about word-image associations?" Jesse suggested.

"They know what 'is' means, they just won't say it," Seth replied frustrated and left.

Sarah sat on the soft sand next to the water, smiling. _"Such a beautiful afternoon,"_ she thought, _"so peaceful."_

"Sarah." the ocean whispered.

"Yes," she said.

"Sarah. Is. Sister." the ocean continued proudly.

"Oh, so you can use verbs, why didn't you tell Seth? She was really disappointed!" Sarah asked, more baffled than upset.

"Water. Blue. Funny." giggled the ocean, with the vocal inflexions of a little child.

***

There is a level of wisdom one acquires in time that allows one to accept that dealing with living entities is an eminently unpredictable process. If one is a scientist, especially in one of the hard sciences where one plus one is always two, parallel lines never meet and the mixture of hydrochloric acid and lye always yields salt and water, one gets more frustrated than the average person by the logically flawed, physically impossible and emotionally charged reactions of unfamiliar living things.

The beautiful surprises though are the breakthroughs you don't expect, the unexplained recoveries, the unconditional love. Despite all its vast body of knowledge, its long life, as long as the universe's, the immortal ocean fell in love with the limited, arrogant and bratty newcomers.

There was no logic behind the affection this immense pseudo-brain poured on the slow giants, no reason why they cherished their relationship and wanted to find out more, no fretting over hidden motives, no reservations. Of course one would argue that the benefit of logic told the vast intelligent community that the out of scale newcomers couldn't pose a threat to them even if they wanted to, but logic had never entered the argument. The ocean was trusting, open, with no defenses.

Sarah adjusted quickly to this closeness, after all she had spent decades surrounded by children and the liveliness of an untarnished spirit was all too familiar to her, but the spontaneity and the boundless energy of the childlike giant wrecked havoc on the nerves of the more hardened sisters. If sister Joseph ever needed additional reasons to be always angry at the world the kindergarten level of conversation that didn't cease for even a second so she could regain her wind pushed her to the limit. Just like a four year old the ocean never stopped talking, a total chatterbox that mixed revelatory knowledge with nursery rhymes and enthusiasm over the most mundane activities, like for instance when it was in awe of sister Novis's graceful gait and thought putting one foot in front of the other as a means of locomotion was miraculous in terms of evolutionary progress.

Seth had mixed feelings about the interaction. On one hand she was instinctively drawn to this personality so open to learning and change because she felt there was no limit to what their joint efforts could bring forth, on the other hand she wasn't a very patient person and was used to communicating with reasonable adults who could express themselves eloquently and keep their emotions under control, and the seemingly endless occurrences of toddler-like tantrums drove her nuts.

More than once she swore to abandon all efforts of communication and run away to the mountains to live off the land, with no neural interlink bracelet and no responsibilities whatsoever. Sister Joseph and the immortals were two extremes of the mind spectrum between which logic and sanity couldn't possibly survive.

"There is no way to stay rational while communicating with this entity who recites the mathematical formulas of the grand unified theory while wondering what butterscotch popsicles taste like! We're just not made for this, it's like trying to swallow the ocean, it can't be done!" she screamed, exasperated, when after several hours of seemingly encouraging progress the immortals asked her what was the meaning of the word _'BE'_.

"They sure got love fast enough!" sister Joseph mumbled. "Why don't you ask cat-brains to explain existence to them, maybe they'll listen to her," she continued, in a surprisingly unique attempt to be helpful.

One thing to be said in defense of the immortals is that they had stopped trying to aggravate the leader and only asked questions because they really wanted to know, not to amuse themselves.

The hive intelligence never irritated Sarah who was in awe of everything it could do, even the doldrums. She spent a lot of time on the beach talking to the ocean, listening to its worries and feelings and questions about life; in a way the ocean thought Sarah was its mommy, just like a Roc bird hatched in a sparrow's nest looks up to its mother hen. The eternal child didn't care that mommy had human limitations, it sensed her unconditional love and felt happy.

So cat-brains set aside a few choice words to share with the grouchy Joseph later through the neural interlink and set out on the difficult challenge of explaining to the immortals what it means to be. Secretly she allowed the ocean to use shorthand so that the back and forth of communication wouldn't be slowed down by formality despite Seth's strict instructions that the immortals should use proper grammar at all times.

"I am," said Sarah.

"You. Purple. Sanctuary. You. Purple."

"No, I am not part of the hive mind, you just live inside me."

"Purple. Inside. Sanctuary. Think. Inside. Ocean. Think. Same. Think. You. Purple."

"No, I am not, there are only a few of you that live inside my cells, compared to your total population, your collective intelligence. I have my own mind, my individual intelligence."

"How. Many. Make. You."

"I don't know, I never thought of it this way, us humans are not used to sharing consciousness."

"Neural. Interlink."

"Yes, but every specimen of our race can exist independently. We don't need to share our thougths in order to survive."

"Purple. Individual. Survive. Alone."

"Then purple is, that is what it means to be."

"Common. Think. Not. Be."

"Yes, if you exist collectively, you also are."

"Purple. Think. Sanctuary. How. Many. Make. You."

"I don't think any amount of purple would make me not me. I have intrinsic characteristics that make me what I am."

"Purple. More. All. Cells."

"I guess if I had more purple beings than human cells that would theoretically alter my human status, but you already modified my DNA and I'm still me."

"Joseph. Sister. Possible."

"As delightful as that sounds, I don't think any amount of purple DNA would alter the sister's charming personality."

_"Aren't you the gossiping Judas, cat-brains!"_ sister Joseph protested through the interlink. _"Keep your opinions to the meaning of life and leave me out of it!"_

Sarah would have liked to protest that she didn't bring that up, but realized it would dilute the conversation and let it go.

"If. Purple. More. Than. You. How. You. Not. Purple."

"I don't know, I guess it is my soul, it doesn't depend on the physical body."

"Purple. Not. Soul."

"I'm sure you have spirit, individually and collectively, I can't tell if it takes a single individual or your entire collective to bring it forth."

"Sarah. Colony. Soul."

"It is possible that the immortal colony inside me can reason autonomously."

"Purple. Soul. Sarah."

"No, I'm still me. You just live there."

"Purple. Hurt. Sarah. Sister."

Sarah paused, she really didn't know how to continue in a way that didn't hurt the immortals' feelings.

"Sarah. Purple. Memories. Sarah. Sister." they insisted.

Sarah remembered her vague feelings of recognition, her unexplained deja-vus, her instinctive reactions to things that should have been unfamiliar. She started wondering if they were right, if the only reason she maintained her individuality was grounded in quantity rather than essence, and she got really scared of losing her soul again, a flashback of a hundred and ninety years ago, she was terrified that she would be engulfed by this massive collective intelligence with no trace of individuality left.

"No. Eat. Sarah. Sister. Love. Sarah." the ocean appeased her fears. "Sarah. Is. Purple. Is. Sarah. Sister."

The conversation had reached a turning point where it reverted from Sarah teaching the ocean the meaning of life to the ocean reassuring Sarah that there was one to speak of.

"Parent. DNA. Parent. Not. Sarah."

They were right, in an absolute logic kind of way, after all she was a combination of her parents' genes and maybe inherited some of their traits, her mother's quirkiness, her father's patience, but she wasn't them, she was Sarah with the angel hair, a unique eternal soul.

"What. Is." whispered the ocean, as if the conversation just started.

_"Give it up, cat-brains, you can't explain what you don't know,"_ laughed sister Joseph.

"Joseph. Explain." said the ocean.

"No way you are dragging me into this, I have better things to do with my afternoon than to worry about my immortal soul; it's safe and sound, unlike other people's." sister Joseph clamored. She turned her mind to Sarah. _"Aren't you late for Vespers? Almost two hundred years and no progress with self-discipline, some people are beyond help_ ," she continued.

_"You see now why they are driving me insane?"_ asked Seth, anxiously. _"By the end of the conversation you reach the conclusion that you don't exist. I like existing and was pretty sure of it until recently. I'd like to keep it that way."_

"Sarah. Late. Vespers. Go." the immortals dutifully nudged.

_"Oh, how sweet, they keep your schedule for you!"_ sister Joseph mocked. _"Too bad they can't perform your tasks and teach your pupils! Ah, wait, they do!"_ she continued.

Sarah's apprehension returned; fortunately for her the monotonous rhythm of the evening prayer soothed her mind and chased away the worries. It brought her back to that place of certainty that was beyond logical argument or created capacity, no matter how vast, to that center of existence that was infinite, eternal and all knowing. That's where Sarah found the misplaced meaning of the word "be" and with great relief put it back in its correct location in her mind. _"Seth is right,"_ she thought. _"I love them, but they can drive humans insane."_

_"Focus!"_ Seth chastised her. Sarah brought back all her attention to the evening prayer.

***

"What do you think they are doing?" Lily whispered.

"I don't know," Jimmy answered. The kids were perked up against one of the open windows of sister Roberta's lab with only their eyes and tiny noses peeking above the rough sill. They looked like they were enacting a comic strip image.

The sisters were sitting on the floor in four neat rows with their backs at them, focused on an ongoing experiment. There was no sound or thought in the room other than the words the kids had just uttered and sister Joseph shuffled to signal her displeasure at the disturbance.

It was strange and unsettling for the children, who from the second they could understand communication were exposed to every word and thought in their community, to experience this silence. Way back in older times, for older people, that would have been pure bliss but for them it was as distressing as suddenly losing one of their senses. They did however abide by sister Joseph's unexpressed reproach and kept their mouths and their minds still.

In front of the sisters, above what looked like a sheet of glass, floated a holographic box. Seth stretched out her hands inside the virtual model and gently touched the back of the container. Periwinkle liquid-like foam spread quickly on her hands and wrists, in a strange motion that looked like a time lapse film of moss covering a rock.

"Oh, this is soo creepy!" Jimmy couldn't help himself.

Sister Roberta turned towards him with a stare that reminded the little trouble-maker he had just gotten back his lab privileges.

For a few minutes it looked like Seth was wearing shear and shimmery water gloves and then the foam flowed to the tips of her fingers, relaxing back into the ever moving boundary. The surface became agitated, like that of a pot of water coming to a boil, quickly shifting patterns as it saved the new information.

The stillness in the room relaxed and the sisters started shuffling around. Lily and Jimmy took the opportunity to sneak in.

"What is that?" Jimmy couldn't help himself.

"It's an intelligent polymer", Sarah whispered quickly. "It memorizes the shape and chemical composition of the model and can record a sequence of movements to create a library of components which can later be combined into larger motion patterns. We are trying to make an organic robot that the immortals can use remotely as a 'body'.

"Why?" Jimmy asked.

"So that they can move around and explore the islands. They were so amazed by sister Novis's walking and so sad they couldn't experience it that we decided to give them legs,"

Sarah smiled.

"Is it going to look like Mother Superior?" Jimmy asked the obvious question.

Seth looked back at them with a mixture of outrage and alarm.

"I don't think so, Jimmy, this is just a rough prototype test. It would make more sense for it to look like sister Novis, but I don't think she'd be ok with that," the redhead continued.

"Would you want a copy of you droning around like a zombie stuffed with purple goo?" sister Novis asked, irritated. "You can have my graceful gait, if you want, but that's it!"

"I don't think the immortals get the concept of individuality and personal space. Actually I don't think they understand why humans consider their bodies individual property and don't appreciate sharing them with the collective," Sarah answered tentatively.

"So who is going to volunteer?" Jimmy asked.

Sarah shrugged.

"How about Solomon?" Jimmy said. "He's not going to be offended if we make a plastic cat just like him."

"I don't know about that. Just because he can't give his consent it doesn't mean that we should do something to him that we ourselves wouldn't like."

"You know, just when I think you couldn't be battier you go right ahead and amaze me with a whole other level of barmy!" sister Joseph exploded. "The privacy and ownership rights of cats! That takes the cake! Should I ask for permission before I trespass his marked territory? He looks at me kind of strange lately!" she continued her diatribe.

"However, we're not copying him. I like having just one Solomon." Sarah defended her argument, unfazed.

"There is not one blessed day I don't wake up regretting my decision to come here with this barnyard bonanza instead of dying peacefully of old age like God intended in a place far from people and twenty light years away from all of you!" sister Joseph frothed, aggravated.

"She loves it, doesn't she?" whispered Jimmy very softly.

"Every blooming second of it!" Sarah giggled quietly. "What would she do without an audience?" the redhead asked rhetorically.

"Enjoy life!" sister Joseph barked and turned her back to them.

"So, how are we going to make the robot?" Jimmy returned to the subject.

"How about you kids help me custom make a human form?" she asked Jimmy whose eyes sparkled at the prospect. He took off running and yelling with excitement as he passed Lily like a full speed freight train "We're going to design a human being! We're going to design a human being!"

"Well, not exactly," Sarah protested, trying to clarify the concept.

"There's what comes of your teaching philosophy!" sister Joseph yelled again. "We're all going to hell and it's going to be your fault! Design a human being, Lord have mercy!" she continued, more and more outraged.

"A human form, not a human being," Sarah clarified.

"If the purple goo tells it to fry and eat the lot of us whom should we blame?" sister Joseph pressed on.

Sarah wanted to point out the faulty logic of this argument since there would be nobody left to file the complaint and 99% of their bodies' composition was completely unsuitable for the indigenes diet, but she took the high road and kept quiet.

***

The kids were bubbling over with excitement. Each of them had composed a list of attributes they very much would have liked the robot to have. Sadly the combination of the aforementioned attributes was physically impossible to build, so they each got to contribute one item that would work with the construct as a whole.

"I want it to have brown skin like me," Lily said.

"And blue eyes," said Jimmy.

"And copper hair, with springy curls" said Jenna.

"Why not blond?" asked Lily.

"I like copper better," Jenna said with a superior attitude.

"And it should be tiny and delicate," said Keko, slanting her long oblique eyes with delight, like a Siamese cat.

"And it should be good at sports," said Tommy, "I want to play catch with it."

"And play the piano," counteracted Jesse.

"No, the guitar!" said Jimmy.

"It can do both," Sarah intervened to make peace.

"And know how to swim," said Jimmy.

"Jimmy, you wouldn't dream of taking another ride on the currents by any chance?" Sarah inquired, worried.

"No, sister," Jimmy answered with the voice and demeanor of a little angel. Sarah shook her head in anguish.

"And it can have sister Novis's walk if Purple likes it," Tommy conceded.

"And it should like cats," Lily concluded.

"I'm sure it will like cats. Cat. Sister. Remember?" Sarah laughed.

_"It is going to look like you picked the parts blindfolded. Are you sure you don't want it to be a fifty foot Cyclops with four arms that plays the harpsichord?"_ Seth joked through the interlink. Jimmy considered the Cyclops idea for a second, then dismissed it.

"No, it would scare the girls," he condescended.

"Speak for yourself, crybaby!" Lily jumped. She was the oldest among her friends and had maintained her unspoken leadership role since birth, she wasn't going to concede it to Jimmy just because he was male! Which brought fourth the very obvious question of gender. All eyes were pinned on Sarah, waiting for a decision.

"Well, since either gender choice would upset half of you, how about we create a third gender, just for the robot?" she offered.

"So the robot would be an 'it'?" asked Lily.

"Practically it is an 'it'. Technically it will be a 'they'. We can call it an 'um'," Sarah said.

_"I, you, he, she, it, um, we,..."_ Seth recited through the interlink. _"Would multiple 'ums' still be a they?"_ she asked.

_"Technically a singular 'um' is a 'they',"_ Sarah countered.

_"I see they rubbed up on you, this conversation is almost as maddening as talking to Purple directly,"_ Seth mumbled.

***

After prolonged design sessions where the features and attributes of the robot were painstakingly crafted until the children were happy with the results, 'um' was born, a delicately androgynous creature with slanted blue eyes and fiery hair shining even brighter against its chocolate skin, standing barely five foot two, graceful as a butterfly and swift as the wind.

"We need a name!" the kids jumped, crowding around the doll-like figure to touch and observe it. "The skin is so realistic, it looks alive," Lily said, amazed.

"The ocean likes to have sisters, how about we call 'um' Sister?" Jimmy said.

"It would be kind of confusing because all of us are sisters, we will never know who you called," Sarah said.

"How about something shorter, like Sys," Jenna said.

"Sys. Sister. Love. Sys." Jesse recited. "It'll do," he approved.

"Sys it is," Sarah sealed the deal.

Sys stood still with its aqua blue eyes gazing vaguely in the distance and a sweet smile on its lips, completely oblivious to the fact that it was going to love cats, play the piano and the guitar, be good at sports and enjoy swimming. Despite the hodge-podge of characteristics um belonged in the noisy group almost as if it were the same age and had just joined them for class.

_"I'll have to remember all the time it's an 'um',"_ Sarah thought, gazing at the tiny figure that looked so much like a child it gave her goose bumps. _"If I didn't know it weren't human, I'd offer it ice cream."_

_"If I told you once, I told you a thousand times, when you're looking for trouble you're sure to find it. I don't like this 'um' business one bit. Too arrogant."_ sister Joseph voiced her opinion and for the first time Sarah considered that maybe the grouch had a point.

### Chapter Seven

### Of Life Ethics

With the creation of um came obvious practical matters: where was Sys going to spend its time, what was to be its schedule, who was to be its custodian, would it need some level of autonomous function for the times when the immortals were otherwise engaged? It seemed unfair to make a being, albeit an artificial one, only to have it remitted to storage when it didn't serve a purpose.

The sisters took some time every day after Matins for a couple of weeks to figure out the ethical issues as well as the logistical ones.

_"If it weren't for Sarah, we wouldn't have this problem,"_ sister Joseph started the discussion, unconvinced.

_"Why is it a problem?"_ asked sister Mary Francis. _"Let's not forget who we owe our extensive like span to, I don't think this endeavor is so much of an imposition. What was on your schedule, sister, that wouldn't allow you to waste time on this topic?"_ she asked rhetorically.

_"It just isn't right to design a human being,"_ sister Joseph noted.

_"It is not a human being,"_ Sarah interjected.

_"Even worse! What is it then? Does it have rights? Feelings? Should we be responsible for teaching it right from wrong? Mathematics? First aid?"_ she let her misgivings flow.

"We can't make something in our image and let it run loose across the land as if it weren't our responsibility!"

_"We share this responsibility with the immortals; for all practical purposes they will be um's conscience, I don't think we should interfere too much anyway,"_ Seth debated.

_"What makes you think the immortals even like us? After all we didn't ask them when we settled here, maybe they think they were better off before we came. We are gigantic, ignorant and apparently too slow for their standards,"_ continued sister Joseph.

_"If a giant race of gaseous beings decided to settle Earth and live in the upper atmosphere because the conditions on the ground weren't favorable for them would you have a problem sharing the planet?"_ Seth asked a theoretical question.

_"Non-toxic gaseous beings?"_ asked sister Novis.

_"Obviously,"_ answered Seth, annoyed.

_"I would worry about the rate of oxygen consumption,"_ the sister continued analyzing her hypothetical situation.

_"Let's just assume that the oxygen levels wouldn't be affected. What on earth are we debating here? We're two hundred years too late for this conversation. We are here, they are here, we get along, what's with the made-up territorial claims?"_ Seth asked, peeved.

_"Just saying, none of you ever think things through, bind the spectrometer to the table and ask questions later!"_ sister Joseph mumbled, gawking at Roberta who shuffled, furious.

_"Sometimes, sister, you cross even the limits we set out just for you! Nobody else in this community is this ungrateful and rude, you should be ashamed of yourself!"_ Roberta blurted. Sister Joseph relented.

_"Let's go over the obvious questions. Where is Sys going to live; since it is your brainchild, Sarah, do you want to take um in?"_ Seth turned to the redhead, who nodded her head in acknowledgement.

_"What should we add to its core code? I think we would be wasting our time with information libraries, the immortals have way more knowledge and capacity than we could generate anyway,"_ sister Mary Francis asked.

_"Not at all, sister,"_ Sarah interjected. _"What is Sys going to do when it is not on remote? I don't want um to be an object, it feels so wrong!"_

_"This is why I beat my gums, but nobody listens to me!"_ sister Joseph observed _. "We have a responsibility to this thing/creature now, I don't even know what it is, what is it, Sarah, since you were so creative as to bring it into being?"_

_"You can think of um as a robot,"_ Sarah said.

_"A self-aware robot?"_ sister Joseph asked.

_"That's what we are trying to determine. If um can learn by itself there is no question that we should consider it artificial life and respect its rights,"_ said Sarah.

_"You mean like freedom and the pursuit of happiness?"_ sister Joseph asked.

_"Why not?"_ asked Sarah.

_"What if it decides to take off and live on its own in the rainforest?"_ she asked.

_"If that's what makes it happy, we should let it! Would you choose to live in the forest?"_ Sarah asked.

_"We're not that lucky,"_ sister Novis thought. Sister Joseph gave her a dirty look but continued her argument.

"Then why did we make it in the first place? We just cut our losses and make another one? I bet none of you bird-brains thought of this, but we aren't creating a life, we're creating a whole race. Do you want to add sentient species number three to this zoo?"

_"She is right about that, if there is an um there can be many ums, maybe they'll be able to self-replicate, maybe the will want children..."_ Seth thought out loud.

_"Maybe they'll like your physique and make twenty thousand of you, we should have glorious fun trying to find the real one!"_ sister Joseph continued the doomsday scenario.

_"You know, sister, I'm so grateful you weren't around when the first caveman sparked fire, you would have objected to that,"_ sister Roberta poked. _"On second thought, you were probably there, you might just have been engaged in another debate at the time."  
_  
_"Sisters, please!"_ Seth reprimanded. _"Can we get back to the subject?"_

_"I'd say,"_ sister Joseph continued in a strangely conciliatory tone, _"let Sarah be in charge of all the decisions regarding the robot. After all she is its mommy, whatever that means for the thing. Do you mind, sister? I don't think all of us should be morally responsible for teaching it right from wrong since you sprung it on us without asking."_

_"I don't mind,"_ Sarah said.

_"And don't forget not to allow it to do any chores, the way you teach the children to only do as they please is a blessing for the future of our kind. We're going to drown in our own refuse soon, nobody is doing anything around here anymore,"_ sister Joseph continued pestering.

_"Asking children to perform pointless menial tasks is not the stepladder to progress,"_ Sarah objected. _"They isolated self-replicating proteins during their class today, proteins which we turned into beefsteak and ate."_

_"And that is supposed to give me comfort because?"_ asked sister Joseph.

_"Maybe their time is better spent engineering an automatic floor scrubber than grinding their knuckles till they bleed!"_ Sarah replied, offended.

_"I learned hard work and discipline in my day and I turned out the better for it!"_ sister Joseph announced with pride. The entire congregation paused and bit their tongues to crush the plethora of commentary generated by this utterance.

What the sisters didn't realize, fully immersed as they were in this heated debate about ethics and consequence, was that all the other people could see through the transparent walls of their prayer room was how the 'sainted ones' spent endless hours together in silence, turning morning into dusk, ignoring hunger and thirst, not moving from their place as if they were no longer subject to any human need. As they sat down on the floor of their crystal cave they had acquired archetypal status, they were the elders' council of their tribe.

***

Since the hypothetical questions remained unanswered and the design by committee ended up irritating even the most long-suffering of the sisters, a decision was made to entrust the care, education and wellbeing of um to Sarah to raise as her offspring with all the duties and responsibilities involved.

Sarah couldn't remember being so excited since the cats arrived on Terra Two and she first laid eyes on Solomon, although this new creature came with a lot more responsibility and no instruction manual, which gave the redhead a little trepidation and slight feelings of inadequacy. Sister Joseph eagerly brought these misgivings to a simmer with continuous pointed criticism.

In many ways Sys was like a child, taking in the world with innocence and avid curiosity, until, that is, Purple grabbed the remote and um became the bearer of wisdom and immortality. At other times it suddenly ceased acting visionary and started chasing the cats around the tables of Sarah's shop.

Sarah prepared Sys a room in her home, one with a large window overlooking the ocean so that um could rest and dream and think of its future, just like any child would. Sys didn't eat, of course, or need to rest at night, but it slept between sundown and sunrise grace to a tiny subroutine sister Roberta had included in its hard code. Sarah never said anything about that but was secretly grateful that Sys didn't spend its nights in a chair, wide eyed and staring at the wall like an insomniac.

Curiously um never asked why its physical attributes were so different from the others', a perpetual child among scores of children who grew up and left allowing younger ones to take their place in Sarah's chemistry class. Sys accepted it would never change, just like Sarah and the sisters didn't, in this strange endless life they made up as they went.

Sys sometimes spent hours at its desk next to the window putting virtual puzzles together, at other times it disappeared into a VR bubble to explore or to play. Its memory was limitless and um quickly committed to it any piece of information that came its way, from coleslaw recipes to the Critique of Pure Reason, indiscriminately and without a hierarchy of value. This is how Sarah grew in erudition beyond her wildest dreams, since Sys liked to share its newly acquired knowledge with whoever happened to be around (usually the redhead) by reciting for instance all three volumes of the aforementioned philosophical treatise during the course of several days, with intonation and without getting tired.

When Sys wasn't reciting literary and scientific works she helped Sarah with her tasks, watching with delight how the hydrosol whirled slowly through the distillation coil and taking in the delicate aromas with its little nose that quivered like a cat's. Sys didn't have a sense of smell, um catalogued scents by analyzing their chemical composition and putting them in the same category with similar substances. This rendered some hilarious mismatches on occasion and got Sys really confused; um then picked up its cat (it had unofficially adopted Lisa, the orange tabby, because it wanted to be just like "mom") and went to its room to brood.

In the excitement of raising Sys and the daily interactions between it and the children the sisters almost forgot what um's original purpose was but the immortals never got impatient with that, they were incapable of impatience, their eternal genetic code could not assimilate the notion of urgency.

They of course loved Sys. Sys. Sister. Sarah knew that whenever um was nowhere to be found she could look for it on the beach. The ocean yielded an intense attraction on the robot who talked to it for hours, retelling it stories if it didn't have anything new to say, singing songs, imagining what it was like on the ocean floor. Um looked so human it didn't ponder on the differences that made it unique. For the longest time Sys assumed that if Sarah couldn't breathe under water it couldn't either and didn't picture the extraordinary world of choices its artificial make-up opened up.

### Chapter Eight

### Of Love and Parenting

_"Mom, I'm going out into the ocean for a couple of days to talk to Purple,"_ Sys sent Sarah a message through the neural interlink.

Sarah jumped from the experiment she was working on, spilling the fir essential oil all over the counter and a dish of Morchella mushroom hybrids and making the entire shop smell like the enchanted forest for a second.

"Wait, where are you going, Sys, come back!" she yelled, running out to the beach only to see Sys's head and shoulders quickly advance through the water. Um turned around for a second, with its fiery curls blazing in the suns' light, waved back at its mother, then got picked up by one of the fast currents and disappeared from sight.

Sarah's heart sunk as she stood still on the beach, suddenly not knowing what to do with herself, forgetting all about the experiment, the transit system they'd been working on for months and her religious duties. She was overwhelmed with worry, what was um going to do in the ocean, it was too young to go into unknown territory they were still exploring and only God knew what else was hidden under the green-blue waves, what dangers, what challenges! Seth felt the redhead's anguish and showed up stealthily behind her as it was her custom. She startled Sarah when she placed a hand on her shoulder; the redhead suddenly stopped the unconscious wringing of her hands.

"Don't worry, you're worrying! Sys is going to be fine, it was designed to withstand the streams' torque. It is just as well adjusted to water as we are to land, Jimmy wanted it to know how to swim, remember?" she said in a warm calming voice.

"It is still developing, how could I not worry, I don't think it was ready for this, and going it alone! Someone should have gone with it, we could have planned!" Sarah fretted, anguished.

_"Nobody worried about me being bounced around at 560 mph, and let me tell you, that's no picnic!"_ sister Novis thought, increasing Sarah's discomfort with the endeavor. Sarah got a sudden and overwhelming empathy for Jimmy's parents, wondering how they must have worried when the little dare-devil decided to mightily conquer the waves. She felt Jimmy fuss uncomfortably over the event.

"Um has its bracelet on, just tell it to be careful and let you know how things are going," Seth offered, trying to loosen up the knots that were twisting overlapping layers in Sarah's stomach. The latter didn't comment, she just turned around and walked into the soybean crops, looking at them as if she saw them for the first time, passed her beloved apothecary shed and advanced through the emerald fields towards the purple bean tree with footsteps muffled by the brick colored dirt. Solomon followed right behind her like a silent shadow, accustomed as he was to the daily trips and the siesta under the bean tree.

Sarah sat down in the shade of the canopy with Solomon in her lap but her spirit was not there with her, it was wandering through blue-green waters trying to catch a glimpse of springy copper curls. The sister was two hundred and fifty six now and carried her old soul in a body that still looked thirty-three. In her long life she had experienced many more challenges than she thought she would growing up, this one however was completely opposite to what she had gotten accustomed to: in a few short months she had a child, watched it grow and saw it walk out into the world and this experience didn't give her any time to adjust. She passed through three different stages of her life at a speed that left her hurting and questioning everything: her purpose, her resilience, her balance.

She stood there worrying about Sys, this thing/creature whose concept didn't even exist the year before and who was now occupying her entire attention. She'd been teaching and caring for and soothing and protecting Sys for months, all her other plans seemed so unimportant by comparison and now she suddenly had to let um go, the little bird had learned to fly and the nest had become too small.

Solomon purred peacefully in Sarah's lap, trying to soothe her. She looked around herself and saw the perfect fields of green undulate under the breeze, edged by the blue contour of the ocean under the coffee-latte sky, the miraculous haven a few crazy humans had built for themselves out of nothing. The suns were glowing in the pinkish clouds, at odds with each other and casting two shadows. The heat intensified the strong fragrance of lavender and frangipani and the breeze carried the scent of honey from the wild pear orchard across the valley.

It was seven, so Sarah joined the Vespers adding to the usual prayers her intention that Sys's journey be marvelous and rewarding and the hope that um would be safely returned to her in a short while.

***

As soon as Sys disappeared under the water it found itself in a very familiar surrounding. Um didn't understand why, but it instinctively knew every turn as it was walking through this landscape it had never seen. In the highly refractive medium everything looked larger and closer and tinted blue-green. Sys walked quickly through a beautiful gorge of sedimentary rocks, floated over a canyon with the grace of a bird and continued its journey up a gentle hill that overlooked a vast bowl shaped valley. An immortal colony covered the entire surface of it, shimmering and glowing and forming ephemeral patterns. They pushed and pulled the strong currents above them into a splendid weaving of directional flows, a weaving not intended for human eyes but which Sys's pressure sensors transformed into the most beautiful sight it had ever seen. Purple was certainly doing its best to impress um.

"This is home," um thought with a tinge of longing and remorse gnawing at its mind, for how could the ocean be home when the place it was born, its mother and its friends were out there on dry land, the only world it ever knew. Sys edged closer to the shimmery edge of the purple colony. Its hair was floating weightlessly around her head like a little copper halo highlighted in green by its fluid surroundings.

Um's sensors could pick up a lot more shades and micro-movements than the human eye. After some adjustment um started differentiating between the endless purple hues in the shimmery surface. The shades formed spidery connections, main arterial flows, radial arrays and directional fields and the surface thickness wasn't even as it first seemed, but had depth and density variations like a liquid three dimensional map.

Sys tried to follow the ever shifting connections, the purple language that no human could ever understand, fascinated by the multiple levels of meaning that existed simultaneously in the smallest of patterns. Even the water above it, um noticed, didn't have a uniform consistency at all, it counterpointed the changes in the purple field like a separate set of instruments in a symphonic piece.

She drew even closer and sat down next to the edge of the purple colony.

"You. Think. Human. You. Purple." the colony said. "Human. Three. Dimension. Ocean. Home. Dirt. Home. Same. Home." they continued explaining to the puzzled um who couldn't understand but rather felt what they were trying to say. It stretched its hands to touch the purple surface and the microscopic inhabitants covered them swiftly, making them tingle. Sys started giggling as the purple colony retreated into its boundaries. Um lifted her hands to her face and noticed that the purple organisms had deposited what looked like little sparks at the center of its palms. The sparks seemed to be contiguous with um's polymeric structure which remained otherwise unaffected.

"Sugar. Sister." the colony said. Indeed many of the radicals in the polymer that constituted Sys's body bore significant similarities to sugar. Sys started to worry it might be good to eat, which made Purple laugh.

"Sys. Funny." the immortals said. As night approached the purple city started glowing with a light that turned more intense as the glassy medium above it darkened. Its life pulsed with the intensity of a metropolis composed of highly interconnected but seemingly independent sections. Purple was very excited about its guest, so it set aside many of its normal activities to listen to Sys talk about the soybean fields, its mother's apothecary, sister Joseph's brooding, an unabridged narration of the Brothers Karamazov, Jimmy's latest goofs, how Sys liked its hair and the shape of its nose, the latest adventures of her cat Lisa and the formula of human ribonucleic acid.

By the time Sys had almost finished a comparative study between two musical pieces belonging to pre-classical and classical styles the suns came up and the purple glow softened back to a shimmer. Um realized that it didn't sleep at all but didn't know that Sarah had spent all day with sister Roberta working on remotely pausing the sleep subroutine so that Sys wouldn't find itself vulnerable so far away from home.

Um talked to the immortals some more about its room and the VR bubbles, and what it learned in school, and its friends, and suddenly felt like going back home, its dirt home, that is.

"Go. Sarah. Sister. Love. Sarah." the immortals said.

"I'll be sure to let her know," the robot replied, turning quickly on its legs and heading home.

***

Sys arrived home very early the next morning and sneaked back into its room where it lay quietly on the bed pretending to sleep, worried that something wrong happened to keep it awake during its unauthorized expedition and Sarah would be mad.

When the suns came up Sarah woke up and walked by Sys's room glancing inside it out of habit. She was surprised to see um sleeping peacefully with its hands peeking from under the pillow, one palm half revealing what looked like a tiny light source.

The redhead was so happy that Sys was back home that she didn't stop to ponder why it was sleeping or what was the light in the palm of its hand. She closed the door gently so that the hissing of the coffee press wouldn't disturb um's rest.

***

Sarah kept grinning a smile of pure joy at the return of the prodigal um, delighting over the fresh image of it peacefully snoozing in its bed. As she poured the coffee in her poppy colored cup she remembered the little lights at the center of Sys's palms. _"What on earth was that?"_ she wondered.

_"What on earth was what?"_ asked Seth through the interlink. Sarah was pleased that her mentor was awake so early and she eagerly shared the good news of um's return, not forgetting to mention the puzzling details of the unexplained sleep cycle and the tiny sparkles in its palms.

_"I couldn't see it very well, I didn't want to wake Sys up, but it looks like light to me,"_ the redhead continued.

"Hi, mom," Sys interacted sheepishly from the doorway and then squeezed between the redhead and the counter to settle comfortably on the round upholstered bench that wrapped around the kitchen table. The upholstery fabric was soft and apricot colored and the gleam of the rising suns set it ablaze. The whole kitchen felt warmer all of a sudden and the coffee aroma filled it like an enticing whisper.

"Sweetie, I was worried sick! How was your trip? What did you find? Are you ok? What's on your palms? Why were you sleeping?" Sarah unloaded her deluge of questions, taking um's face in her hands and staring at it with great care to make sure it wasn't damaged in any way.

"Mom, I'm fine," Sys brushed off her motherly concerns. _"Grown-ups,"_ she thought, _"so overprotective, really!"_

Sarah wanted to reply that Sys would find out for itself how parents worry about their children, but then realized that this might not be an issue for Sys's race, after all um was the first of its kind, how could a human, even a motherly one, know how to give it this type of advice.

"I'm ok, really. Purple sends its best wishes," Sys reassured her, trying to downplay the fact that its hands lit the room like a mobile laser show every time it moved them.

"Thanks, that's very kind of them. Sys, what is THAT?" Sarah asked softly, pointing her finger at the luminous palms um was unsuccessfully trying to hide under the table.

"I don't know, really, the immortals gave this to me," um said tentatively.

"Can I see?" Sarah nudged gently.

Sys lifted her hands and turned her palms up; their radiant light amplified in the sunny kitchen. There was no pinpoint source of the luminous flux, it just seemed to emanate from um's palms.

"Is it radiating heat too?" Seth asked from behind Sarah. The leader had let herself in through the kitchen door that led out into the fields. She was staring at Sys's palms with intense curiosity.

"Not a lot," Sarah answered.

"What does it do?" Seth asked um.

"I don't know, I didn't notice anything unusual," Sys answered. As if directed um gently cupped its palms and held them facing each other about a foot apart like miniature acoustic mirrors. A low range hum buzzed between the hands and made the teakettle whistle. Sys moved the invisible center between her palms and the kettle slid abruptly on the stovetop, cantilevering precariously over the edge.

"I guess we've got ourselves a new energy source. Call Roberta, see if she can understand how it works and if we can replicate it. In the meantime, Sys, can you figure out how to control this ability and what else it can do?" she asked um, smiling encouragingly.

Sys jumped out of its chair and ran to show off to a sizable group of children who were gathered on the beach in one of their favorite hangout spots. It was almost time for school and everybody was very energetic after a good night's sleep. Low hums, giggles and awed interjections punctuated the usual noises of the house and flowed freely through the open window as Sarah was getting ready for Matins. From said window she could see little objects fly gingerly through the air driven by an unseen force. She could also see Jimmy and Solomon, and Lily's little cousin, Gemma, float in a prone position and spin slowly above the sand dunes and the other children's heads like wobbly human propellers. Gemma, who was three, didn't understand the phenomenon but seemed to be wildly entertained by this new game.

Seth approached the group all dressed up in her religious garb and looking more intimidating than ever. She was actually getting ready for the morning service, but since the children looked daunted by her appearance and thought she came over to check on their little gathering she didn't want to let a good opportunity go to waste.

"Sys, put the children and the cat down!" she ordered, adding "Slowly!" as the living propellers started descending too fast. "Aren't you guys late for school?" the leader's transparent eyes flashed intensely over the gathering. The kids got up quickly and scattered into several groups according to their respective schedules. Nobody wanted to be on Seth's bad side, it was one of those unwritten rules that got passed down from generation to generation in the school. Seth suppressed a smile and noticed that little Gemma was left behind in the commotion and was staring at her with a glimmer in her eyes and completely unimpressed by the leader's imposing stance.

"Whee, plane, Gemma wheee!" she pleaded, cupping her little palms and trying to replicate Sys's force field.

"Sorry, Gemma, we can't play right now, Sys needs to go to school. Let's go find your mommy, shall we?" Seth tried a diversion with little hope that the three year old would let go of her desire for the new game. Fortunately for her Gemma remembered she was hungry and mommy sounded like a great person to take care of that problem for her, so she stretched her little hand towards Seth, expecting the leader to walk her home.

***

_"Sorry!"_ Seth uttered through the neural interlink. The comment created quite a stir in the congregation because Seth had come in half an hour late and disturbed the ceremony with extraneous remarks, both issues she normally chastised in others. The commotion slowly subsided, the prayer resumed.

Sister Joseph stared relentlessly at the leader who was as out of this world as usual during religious service and continued responding to the homily with the customary replies. The service ended and the sister, who had been fuming the entire time, directed her full verbal artillery towards the leader.

"Some of us give this institution the respect of showing up on time and prepared for service. One would wish that those in positions of authority cared enough to enforce the statutes, not defy them." she uttered with a haughty demeanor.

"I apologize again, sister. It couldn't be helped, I had to take Gemma home," Seth said.

"I wish all of us had the privilege to trample the rules as we see fit," sister Joseph continued, but was abruptly interrupted.

"Sister, can we talk about this some other time? Sys came back with a new energy source; sister Roberta, can you spend some time with um and try to put together the force field's theoretical model?" Seth said.

"Sys is back?" Mary-Francis jumped with delight. "Oh, I bet Sarah must be overjoyed, she was so worried!" she continued.

"You are turning this entire generation into a bunch of sissies, so you know!" sister Joseph flew off the handle, irate. "If my parents doted on my every move like cat-brains does with her humanoid toy I'd still be home sucking on my thumb!"

"Don't you always say you regretted coming here?" sister Novis teased.

"Don't be facetious, sister! I'm sure Sarah's parents would like some input into this conversation, why, with her leaving her home planet and all!" she continued, outraged.

Sarah had to admit that she didn't fare much better in the permission asking department than her offspring and if um weren't completely artificial she would have wondered about its genetic heritage and implications thereof, but Sys was not of her flesh, it was a beautifully radiant creature spun of sugar whose subroutines played the roles of nerves and peptides and whose consciousness was an indivisible part of the immortal core.

"I am very happy um is back, sister," Sarah answered sister Mary-Francis kindly. "It may not be my flesh and blood, but Sys is my child," she almost apologized, too thankful for um's return to get upset.

***

One doesn't know if Roberta would have found the energy field's theoretical model by herself (one only has to assume that she would have, considering history) but she didn't even have time to begin the basic tests before the eager um recited the complete set of controlling equations directly into the mainframe, asking the computer to spit out a virtual model with operating instructions at the end of the process.

Sister Roberta didn't want to look too impressed because she had rightfully earned the reputation of a genius for whom nothing was impossible, but she had to admit that Purple's capabilities went so far beyond human limitations it would have been stupid to turn down the already processed knowledge for the dubious glory of reinventing the wheel.

Sys stood next to her, smiling and acting as if it had offered the sister a stick of gum, completely unmoved by the complexity and advanced technical knowledge required to generate this science presentation. Roberta wondered how come the um didn't act superior, any human certainly would have. It was not that Sys didn't have internal processes that acted very similar to human emotions, it loved its mother, was very protective of its school friends and could get happy or sad on occasion, but it had a seemingly infinite patience, an avid thirst for knowledge and a complete lack of ego which Roberta suspected had more to do with its Purple kinship than its human upbringing.

"I see the energy field is definitely strong enough to push us to hyperspace, what else can it do?" she asked Sys.

Sys didn't answer but picked up a tin beaker between its cupped palms and slowly turned it into a plastic flower, a broccoli spear and finally a bubble of milk. Sys and Roberta stared at the milk ball for a while, the liquid acted as if floating in imponderability with the surface tension as its only container, a gooey ellipsoid spinning slowly around its slanted axis.

"Holy mercy!" Seth exclaimed, staring open mouthed at the willful transformation of matter. The leader seemed to be everywhere at the same time and never missed the important breakthroughs of their community. Her comments startled um, who lost its focus and allowed the milk to splash on the floor, subject to gravity again.

"How come it didn't turn back into tin?" Seth asked. Um looked puzzled at the question, not understanding the logic.

"How are you doing this?" Sarah whispered from behind Seth.

"They're the same sub-atomic components, I'm just reorganizing them," um said simply, a bit bothered by the all the attention.

Roberta had regained her confidence and recognized some of the equations from way back when she fused materials together and pulled Jimmy from the beach. The theoretical model made perfect sense to her, of course, but all the other sisters who had gathered in the lab in the meantime were more befuddled by the equations themselves than the miraculous transformation of matter.

"Well, I guess we can all stop cultivating the fields now," sister Joseph commented, for once not protesting but a little unsure of her footing. "We can make cat-brain's toy here turn dirt into potatoes and we won't ever have to worry for nothing."

Sarah smiled at the fine irony; they have been praying twice a day for almost two hundred years to a God who told them nothing was impossible and now everyone was confused by the fact that this promise was in fact true.

"I like cultivating the fields, it's good exercise and something to look forward to every morning," Sarah answered, still smiling. "Why waste a perfectly good miracle on something you can do for yourself?" she continued.

"At least we know there will be no more emergencies," sister Mary-Francis commented.

"Unless something happens to the sugar toy," sister Joseph replied. "We should make more of them, you know, to be on the safe side," she said and the corner of her eye caught a glimpse of a very flushed Sarah who looked petrified with outrage.

"Yeah, yeah, it's your child, blah, blah, insensitive, I know. Get over it!" sister Joseph said unfazed. "Seriously, shouldn't we have more ums?" she turned to Seth.

"Should we make the next hundred look like Seth? She'd love that!" Sarah couldn't help herself. Seth pinned her down with a grizzly glance but said nothing.

***

Humans are used to making difficult choices, usually between not so appetizing options, we grin and bear through the lesser indignity and life goes on. We freeze when offered an infinite number of wonderful possibilities, we don't know what to do, or what to start with, or how to prioritize. This is what Sys's new feature brought to the sisters: the agony of infinite choice and no limits. The group pushed and argued, bringing up things that needed done, things that would be nice to have, and some quite interesting bits with great entertainment value that the stricter sisters found unworthy of a religious order sworn to promote simplicity and self-restraint.

Sys and the other children were mostly oblivious to the important issues but found that the force came in handy with many games and group activities and since the grown-ups were so immersed in their own interests the kids took the opportunity to create a list of options of their own, a lot less structured but infinitely more clear in terms of what was to be done and when: whatever they felt like and right then.

Sys was thrilled to be the center of attention and she graciously attended to its friends' requests by creating an unspecified number of pets of all varieties (cats, dogs and goldfish featured prominently on the list), a giant playground filled with things that spin, an ice cream and fudge fountain that flowed in an endlessly recycling loop, where one could flip through a vast selection of flavors with a touch of a finger, and a bouncy sand dune where the children could unload the enormous reserves of energy and hyperactivity that drove sister Joseph nuts.

When the grown-ups finally came out of their meeting they were flabbergasted by how much their peaceful little world had changed during their short absence. For all intents and purposes Sys had transformed the beach into the wonderful city of Oz, complete with a magic castle and mythical creatures.

"See? This is what happens when children receive no guidance. They go off into la-la land and waste time and resources on this...monstrosity!" sister Joseph screamed, shocked.

There was no response, the sisters were staring aghast at Children's Land and words failed them. The little ones were excited beyond reason, no doubt in response to the unlimited amounts of sugary goodness they freely enjoyed. The bouncy dune was packed to capacity, throwing little giggling bodies in all directions like leptons in a particle accelerator. A low flying school of angel fish with gauzy wavering tails brushed past sister Joseph's robe startling her and the latter almost stumbled over a fluffy rainbow bunny who jumped at her feet.

"I think we should put some ideas together, it looks like we're behind schedule. What in heavens is this?" Seth gasped, picking up a furry creature with bat wings and a cute cat face. The creature changed color to match the leader's outfit and its eye color shifted from green to lavender to color coordinate. It wrapped its sumptuously thick tail twice around itself and started to purr contentedly. It couldn't have been larger than a persimmon and it fit in Seth's palm with room to spare.

"Oh, that's my pet, Gua!" Sys rushed forth. "I'm so glad you found her, I was looking everywhere, she's so tiny she could get trampled over!" um continued.

The leader wanted to point out that Sys could fix its pet immediately if that were the case, but she thought that would be an insensitive comment.

"So you decided Gua would be a she?" the leader said instead.

"Yes, she needed to have a gender," Sys replied.

Seth paused, uncomfortable.

"But, Sys, you don't have a gender," she questioned delicately.

"Of course I do, silly. I am an um," Sys replied, very sure of itself. Um picked up its pet and ran as fast as its legs would carry it to rejoin a group of kids who were finally starting to settle down.

"Everybody, can you please pay attention?" Seth raised her voice to be heard over the raucous. The noise slowly subsided.

"Sys, where is everything? I can't figure out which way is up in these creative surroundings. Where is Sarah's shop?" she asked with a slight amount of what sounded like panic in her voice.

Sys pointed to the apothecary which was at its expected location. Seth breathed a sigh of relief, then saw sister Joseph's bitter stare and quickly recovered her wits.

"Sys, we need to talk before you make all these alterations, we can't adapt to a landscape that changes all the time, we'll all go mad," the leader said in a warm and conciliatory tone; she didn't want Sys to think it had done something wrong. "No, you don't have to..." Seth started to protest, but by the end of the sentence the beach had reverted to its original state. The kids collectively groaned in protest.

"First comes the virtual reality, then comes the loony bin reality," sister Joseph encouraged. "'Cause stepping into a rainforest without warning wasn't punishment enough," she continued. Something in her tone made the leader fear for the sister's sanity, so she wrapped up the discussion for the night.

"If this teaches us anything is that we should focus on what we want to accomplish, not on what is possible," Seth pointed out to the silver lining.

"Yes, and in our case what we want to accomplish is a world full of, what is that creature, Sys?" she asked um, for a moment forgetting she was talking to a sugar toy.

"It's a glyph," Sys answered in a very natural tone.

"A world full of glyphs," the sister completed her argument and was ready to depart when she realized it was almost seven and time for vespers. "Oh, Lord, two more hours with the lot of you! What have I done to deserve this!" she wailed. The other sisters picked themselves up in silence and they all headed towards the Prayer Hall.

### Chapter Nine

### Of Infinite Wisdom

Sys was sitting on the upholstered bench in the kitchen, holding the glyph gently in its palms and brushing the tiny creature's glorious fur from the top of its nose to the tip of its tail. The glyph purred with delight, raising its chin and stretching its wings. Sys smiled at it and the creature cooed with tiny meowing warbles.

"I see you kept Gua," Sarah smiled.

"Yes, I couldn't part with it," Sys said. "It's my pet. And Lisa, of course," she remembered, worried that the kitty cat would get reassigned due to a lack of affection, care and feeding.

Sarah smiled, then looked out the window, preoccupied.

"Busy?" Sys asked.

"It's the StreamPath, we're adjusting the settings and charting the paths but it's going slowly, the currents are very complex," Sarah said.

"You do know you are using Purple's communication system for travel, right?" Sys said, matter-of-fact.

"What?" Sarah asked astounded.

"The currents, Purple uses them to communicate between the colonies, you are kind of distorting the messages when you travel. It's not a big deal, Purple can clean them up, they just thought you should know," Sys said.

"Well, that's..." Sarah didn't know what to say. It was one of those effects a human couldn't naturally anticipate, there was no telling how many things their group might have disturbed as they plowed ahead unaware in their pioneering efforts.

"Purple likes you very much," Sys said like the good child it was.

"I know," Sarah smiled. "Sarah. Sister."

"They said something about you being one of them, or something like that. They said you remember," Sys continued.

"Remember what?" Sarah asked.

"They didn't say," Sys continued to brush Gua's fur, focused on removing a piece of bramble tangled in the glyph's tail. Sarah frowned. She didn't feel comfortable admitting to the externally imparted memories that sometimes made her feel as if she woke up in some one else's house without warning.

_"I guess a part of your physical make-up is integral to their collective,"_ Seth emphasized through the interlink increasing Sarah's uneasiness.

_"I don't like talking about that, do you mind?"_ Sarah startled, obviously annoyed. _"I am not purple, can't you understand I don't want to be two entities? I like me, I'm used to being me, I don't want to have a voting conference in my head for every decision I make. Should I have another piece of candy? Don't mind if I do! Au contraire, ma chérie, you had enough sugar already. Every single time! You wouldn't tolerate it and neither will I!"_ she continued, more and more upset.

"It doesn't work like that," Sys said, as if it were common knowledge.

"How does it work?" Sarah asked aloud, irate.

"What is the natural background radiation on Terra Two on the twenty fifth cycle during the zenith-nadir suns configuration?" Sys asked without skipping a beat.

"6.2 millirem at 10.1 N barometric pressure and 18% atmospheric oxygenation level" Sarah answered without thinking. "Now how in the world would I know that?" she exclaimed.

"That's how it works," Sys continued simply.

"Me. Purple?" said Sarah, almost amused. "It sounds more like an external hard drive with data," the redhead continued.

"Not only data," Sys continued, and Sarah suddenly remembered a very complex three-dimensional weaving of currents and merging patterns, something she vaguely recognized although she couldn't say why. The warmth of an unidentified positive emotion swept over her psyche.

"Pretty, isn't it?" Sys asked smiling.

"I'm not sure I'm particularly comfortable with that," Sarah objected somewhat unconvinced.

_"Nonsense!"_ Seth interjected. _"Knowledge is knowledge. Would you feel more righteous if you pored over a whole library shelf for a week to get this information?"_ she continued practically. _"If I were you I'd ask them about the meaning of life,"_ she cajoled.

_"They don't know. Darn it!"_ Sarah exclaimed aggravated. _"I can't turn this thing off! What if they ask me to do something bad?"_

_"Break Sys!"_ Purple ordered.

_"Right, like that's ever going to happen!"_ Sarah answered sarcastically.

"And there you go," Sys completed her presentation.

***

Sarah spent some time in silence and solitude while Sys was outside playing with the other children. Um's creative endeavors had resumed, a bit toned down by Seth's plea to keep the environment recognizable at all times.

Watching um through the open window Sarah wondered how it could act so normal and child-like around its friends, this little springy curled encyclopedia on legs who couldn't sit still for even a second and was always searching for something new to sate its curiosity.

The thought of her microscopic inhabitants preoccupied Sarah. Not in the way she pondered the fate of her immortal soul, which was defined by clear rules and had predictable outcomes. There were no rules about her interaction with Purple who obviously loved her, she could do absolutely no wrong as far as they were concerned. They were not of a different, superior essence like angels but flesh and consciousness just like her, with moods and flaws, creatures of dust prone to error, just like her, even though their dust was older than light itself.

Their presence didn't daunt her like eternal beings would and Sarah forgot most of the time that she was communicating with creatures who witnessed the birth of her universe. She wondered if they knew more about what was before or outside of it, or if there was an outside at all. Sarah had trouble visualizing a universe that stretched out infinitely in all directions.

_"How does one hold on to two different kinds of eternity?"_ Sarah asked herself, but her lesser, material immortal self didn't seem to interfere with her spiritual forever self, not interfere but not interested either, as if the concept of religion never occurred to Purple.

_"Do you have a belief system?"_ Sarah asked, almost afraid to listen to the answer.

_"God."_ said the immortals.

_"What is your God like?"_ Sarah asked.

_"God."_ they answered.

_"Do you have a soul?"_ Sarah asked.

_"Purple. Immortal. No. Transfer."_ they whispered.

_"Of course,"_ Sarah thought, _"how stupid of me, why would you need one, you are one, and matter at the same time."_

_"Don't sweat it, cat-brains,"_ sister Joseph interrupted the conversation. _"Mind your own soul, that's the one going on the scales in the thereafter if we ever get to experience that blessed moment. To be honest with you this whole concept of spending eternity with all of you is starting to get on my nerves."_

_"We don't know we're going to live forever,"_ Sarah doubted.

_"Really? You can seriously say that to me when your kin is thirteen billion years old?"_ asked sister Joseph rhetorically.

_"That doesn't mean I am going to go on and on, maybe there is a limit to how many times human cells can be repaired,"_ the redhead commented.

_"No, there isn't,"_ Sys offered from the playground. Sarah looked at um and noticed it had built a zip line from one end of the beach to the other and the children were sliding fast above the tree canopy with excited whoops and cheers. Jimmy was leading the pack and jumped enthusiastically on the two story high air mattress at the end of the course.

_"God help us all!"_ sister Joseph cried out, both shocked and annoyed. _"Maybe it is a blessing we can't die!"_

Sarah stopped to evaluate exactly how long eternity was and what she was going to do with the rest of her time. Human brains are wired to plan and execute for only a few decades; infinite wisdom doesn't waste capacity on systems not meant to last very long.

***

"How is the language coming?" Sarah asked Seth who had let herself in the apothecary and was studying the syrupy green liquid in a round-bottom boiling flask.

"It's an oxidation-proof coating for metal," the redhead clarified. Seth sniffed the narrow neck of the flask and grimaced because of the pungent smell.

"Acetone?" she asked.

"Among other things," the redhead replied.

"It's going well, quite developed," Seth answered the original question. "Too bad some of us still use one word sentences as a matter of course, we'll never convince the immortals to follow grammar rules," she said with reproach.

Sarah smiled, guilty. The leader continued.

"Actually I came here to get your opinion on this," Seth pulled a thick book from under her coat and handed it to Sarah. The pages were filled with strange cursive flourish, the rows were flowing streams picking up speed around the stones in a river bed, mingling and crossing each other without intersecting, like warp in a weave.

"You didn't find the symphonic pieces challenging enough?" Sarah joked, looking at the gravure language.

"Look closer," the leader coaxed her. The images were printed on the sheets but had depth and moved with perspective, revealing more overlapping layers underneath.

"It's a three-dimensional music score, I'm trying to get a more accurate representation of the symbols," she commented.

"What was wrong with normal music, at least you can play four lines of harmony at the same time?" Sarah asked.

"Not with different meanings," the leader argued.

"Do you understand any of this scribble?" Sarah asked incredulously.

"Parts of it, I don't think we can grasp all the messages at the same time, it's very complex," Seth said.

_"You have forever to think about it, you can pace yourself,"_ sister Joseph commented from the field where she still enjoyed planting tomatoes with her own hands even though the whole process was now completely automated.

"She almost makes it sound like punishment," Seth frowned.

"Talk to me in a few hundred years about that," Sarah answered. A cloud of worry passed over her eyes but was instantly dispersed by the delight of Sys's arrival to the apothecary. Um sat down at one of the tables and lifted the perfume samples to her tiny quivering nose.

"What is punishment?" Sys asked.

_"Give me strength!"_ sister Joseph retorted, revolted.

***

To prove that expectations are defined by perspective the children had no misgivings about the infinite span of their lives or worries about the safety of their immortal soul, they were born to this strange life and embraced it wholeheartedly. Lily, Jimmy and Jenna led unruly packs of children through the rainforest or rides on the currents (yes, overprotective parents and teachers finally yielded to their tireless demands) disappearing for hours at a time in this enchanted land one third virtual reality, one third transformed matter and one third archipelago of paisley islands under a coffee colored sky studded with artificial stars.

After a while nobody, not even the sisters could remember what was real and what was not because even when they turned off the VR compilers Sys's creations stood as material and undeniable as the rest of the environment; many of them bore uncanny resemblances to the enchanted emerald cave program or the training documentaries about the cultivation of soybeans, so there really was no telling whether what they saw was original, a photonic illusion or reconstituted matter.

To make everybody's life tolerable the sisters agreed to define as real whatever they could see in front of their eyes at any point in time, drawing the line at changing artifacts or landscapes of great sentimental value. Since some of those too were accidentally modified and later recomposed to the last detail by the remorseful um nobody could swear they held the original objects they brought with them from Earth, thus breaking the last bond that kept them attached to the cradle of humanity.

Some of the children had visited Earth, hyperspace travel was commonplace, but the youngsters found the mother planet too cold, too bright, too old, with too many restrictions and too much land between the oceans. Its vegetation looked stunted and meager to the dwellers of luxuriant paradise and the solitaire yellow sun hurt their eyes and bored them senseless with its predictable path across the sky. Their little bodies felt heavier than lead in the stronger gravitational field that rendered their rambunctious muscles clumsy and awkward as if loaded with loose bags of potatoes that shifted their center of gravity constantly and without warning. After a few educational trips to the graviton energy fields and the orbital greenhouse labs they started missing home and daydreamed about the enticing patterns of the ocean currents and the chocolate raspberry sunrises with shiny metallic containers bedazzling the sky.

Even the sisters had to admit, if maybe not out loud, that they weren't used to Earth anymore. Two hundred years is a long time after all. They missed their home while away, the lush green of the fields, the piercing turquoise of the ocean, the crazy suns, the fragrant cats, and especially the warmth of the equatorial climate that soothed their bodies like a spa. What Sarah found hardest to admit was that she missed Purple. She missed it as if it were a very dear friend, as if she were separated from a part of herself.

### Chapter Ten

### Of the Meaning of Life

"Watching the herbs grow?" Seth joked. Sarah was standing in one of the window alcoves of the communal kitchen watching little rays of sunshine move abruptly like spotlights over the lush greenery of the herb garden. The vegetable beds were so finely manicured they looked almost painted in shades of green, magenta, rose and purple, accented by tiny catmint and thyme flowers.

A little wicker basket filled with lemon balm, marjoram, rosemary and lavender was sitting on the corner of the table and the greenery was wilting a little in the warmth of the afternoon.

"Don't you need to put those in water?" Seth continued. Sarah turned around as if awakened from a dream.

"No need, I was planning on drying them," she answered with an enigmatic smile. She kept watching the greenery with an enchanted look on her face, following the buzz of bees around the blooming mint that draped over the heated flagstones of the pathway like a fragrant blanket.

"Are you on kitchen duty?" Seth asked.

"One would hope, given that she is in the kitchen," mumbled sister Roberta from behind the stove. She was struggling with a large pot of beans and glared at the two, frustrated. "Do you mind? A little help?" Seth and Sarah jumped to assist in moving dinner from the stove to the countertop.

"This could use more rosemary," Sarah commented with her mouth full.

"Are you here in an advisory capacity? Where is the pot roast?" Roberta admonished her.

"Haven't started it yet," Sarah smiled. "It's still in the pantry, marinating."

"Do we plan on having any of it tonight?" Roberta asked. Sarah didn't answer, but picked up the pot roast from the pantry, added a few fresh herbs and a little pepper and placed it in the oven.

"What happened? You look like you're in another world." Seth asked, amused.

"Have you noticed how beautiful mint flowers are?" Sarah said, still absent-minded.

"What's with her?" Seth asked sister Roberta, who shrugged and continued cooking, just as puzzled by the musing redhead as the leader.

"Hi, mom," Sys zoomed through the kitchen, sniffed the wilting herbs and sat down at one end of the table. "What's for dinner?"

"What do you care?" sister Roberta asked, but quickly lowered her gaze under Sarah's reproachful eye. "Pot roast and beans. Well, at least the beans are for sure." A delightful aroma of roast meat came out of the oven, as if to contradict her.

"Hi, sweetheart!" Sarah's eyes lit up at the sight of um. "Did you have a good day at school?"

"Mhh," Sys tentatively mumbled an answer. Um busied itself with a three dimensional puzzle she made up on the spot, trying to draw very little attention to itself. Um liked to keep quiet until the sisters forgot it was in the kitchen and watch them go about their daily chores unnoticed like a little ghost. Sometimes it curled up on top of the sill of one of the deep window alcoves and watched the play of light and shadow on the greenery, or the quick rain shower fascicles playing their unexpected dances on the overheated herbs.

As Sarah spied um from the corner of her eye she almost felt as if she was watching herself transposed two hundred years into the future, finding peace and shelter in the arched opening, safe and at home. Sarah smiled again. The stone floors of the kitchen bounced off echoes of footsteps and chitchat and the aroma of food mingled with the fragrance of the aromatic herbs as the afternoon wound down.

"So, what's with the reverie?" sister Roberta didn't let off. She was a curious person and wouldn't let go of an unusual happenstance without a satisfactory explanation. Sarah kept chopping rosemary and marjoram for the beans, paused to gather her thoughts and answered.

"You know, with everything that happened during all this time I can still see my aunts' refectory and kitchen in every last detail when I close my eyes. It looks very much like this one, actually, garden and all," she concluded. "You wouldn't think I'd get so much alien DNA and still stay me," she continued with a slightly tired gaze.

_"And why is that supposed to be a good thing?"_ asked sister Joseph through the interlink.

"Alien is in the eyes of the beholder," commented sister Roberta. "I think on this planet the aliens are us. Have you made any progress with the language?" she asked Seth.

"Yes," the latter replied, without elaborating. "Have you made any progress with the StreamPath?" she retorted.

"Yes," sister Roberta replied, without elaborating.

_"Well, it's good you've been talking. Have you made any progress with dinner?"_ sister Joseph mocked through the interlink.

"Yes," the three replied, without elaborating.

_"Is it burned? I don't want to get my hopes up,"_ sister Joseph optimistically anticipated.

_"Why don't you come here and find out for yourself. Who's making the bread?"_ Seth asked.

Sarah smiled in a daze and got up from her chair to check on the rising dough. She formed six boules, split the tops to allow them to rise and placed them in the oven. Seth nodded her head in disbelief.

"Good heavens, if I didn't ask you we'd all be fasting tonight. Pay attention! It's a kitchen, not a chemistry lab, but still," she counseled in vain. Sarah was in a world of her own, still eight years old, hiding in the doorway between the kitchen and the herb garden and listening to the nuns talk about their day.

"Mom, can I get some herbs for my room?" Sys asked.

"Sure, honey, just get some fresh ones from the garden," she said, and watched um step out into the sunshine and bend over the herb bed with a graceful stance straight out of a medieval painting, its copper curls glowing like fire against its chocolate skin. _"The more things change_ ," Seth thought. A rambunctious group of children passed sister Joseph who was about to enter the kitchen and ran across the room with great noise to get to the beach through the garden.

"Hey!" sister Joseph admonished, "How many times do I have to tell you not to use the kitchen as a shortcut to the playground? This is a prayer hall, not the monkey bars!" she tried to look outraged, but the kids were way out of sight by now, leaving echoes of their laughter between the stone walls and followed by Sys who completely forgot her herb project and joined them in their roughly planned adventure.

Jesse, who was covering the back, hesitated, turned around, grabbed a honey chamomile cake, thought about it, then grabbed one more and rushed to catch up with the other children.

"Good, you didn't forget dessert!" sister Joseph noticed, pleased. She grabbed a few honey chamomile cakes from the mounding pile in the middle of the table and started munching quietly.

"Don't eat sweets before dinner, you'll ruin your appetite," sister Roberta commented, half-jokingly.

"It's good you remember to tell me!" sister Joseph replied, outraged. "They don't have any schedule," she nodded towards the children who were almost out of sight, "if they were raised by wolves they'd have more structure in their lives." She paused, then continued. "Why don't you ask the sugar toy to make food and spare yourself the trouble?" she asked Sarah.

"Oh, the bread is ready!" the latter snapped out of her unusual reverie and pulled the crispy boules out of the oven. The steamy aroma reached through the open window into the fields, calling out to the sisters more effectively than a dinner bell.

"Mind the pot roast," said sister Joseph, and Sarah rushed to pull the main course out of the oven before it was too late.

Sister Mary Francis had come into the kitchen unnoticed and was setting the table without noise, moving back and forth to bring the butter and the cheese and the fruit and the cucumber salad. The table filled with abundance, leaving just enough room for the main course platter.

"And here I thought, silly me, that we took a vow of simplicity," sister Joseph gazed over the feast, secretly delighted. For all her harsh demeanor the sister didn't like sparseness and austerity and the communal meals, always lavish with warm bread and baked goods and platters of the vegetables and fruit they had grown themselves made her feel proud and fulfilled. It was the labor of their hands that made the dirt spring forth the abundance that was so unashamedly displayed for even the most common of meals.

Slowly the sisters arrived, one by one drawn in by the smell of fresh baked bread and they all ate in silence, according to their custom.

***

"Finally! You'd think we were recreating the known universe! Lay it over there," Seth gestured towards the table, irritated. Sister Roberta placed the VR compiler on the smooth wooden surface and pressed play. The large glazed hall disappeared and they found themselves in front of a planetary model with all the currents charted out. The transportation routes were outlined in lime green and electric blue.

The StreamPath comprised about one tenth of the entire circulation system of the planet and was painstakingly interconnected, with access to each and every island. The paisley outlines of the land masses and the finely threaded web in between made the model look like old-fashioned openwork embroidery, in strange contrast to the advanced theoretical physics employed in developing it.

"What is the maximum capacity of the system, sister?" Seth asked Roberta. The latter looked at her and by the surprise in her eyes the leader realized that she didn't consider this factor. The sister tried to answer but Seth stopped her with a hand gesture.

"Evidently public transportation is only a small part of it, the whole point was to move freight with the least amount of effort. The thought never occurred to you?" she asked with an intense stare.

Sister Roberta looked down in lieu of admitting she didn't think about it.

"How long would it take to figure this out?" Seth asked with a tone that didn't leave room for excuse. "This project is taking way too long, I thought you had this figured out already, are we are all gathered here to watch you work?"

The sister typed furiously some modifications to the equations and recompiled the model.

"Assuming we work out the automatic jumps, and that should not be a problem with a few sensors, theoretically there is no limit to weight and volume. The inertia of each individual cargo would have to be calculated separately, of course, every gram counts at that speed."

"Securing systems for moving cargo? I assume it gets knocked around at 560 mph," Seth continued her train of thought.

"Of course, just like on any other ship," sister Roberta answered.

"A barge doesn't travel at that speed. Any special requirements?" Seth insisted.

"Nothing we can't figure out," sister Roberta spoke before she realized she was just pouring gas on an open flame. Seth said nothing but her eyes were throwing thunderbolts in all directions, making even Sarah look around for cover.

"I was hoping you'd show me an already designed ship with all of these problems worked out, the velocities and shear strengths calculated and a working prototype ready for testing," Seth continued in an icy tone.

_"Why is she so upset?"_ Sarah thought, _"if there is anything we have in abundance it's time."_ The leader glared briefly at her to signal she heard and disapproved.

"So, assuming that everything will work as described, what are the next steps?" she asked sister Roberta.

"We coordinated the hub locations with the other islands and as soon as the plans are finalized we send them the blueprints so they can start building. There is really not much in terms of construction, just a small receiving dock and an office for the distribution system," sister Roberta quickly answered.

"Ok," Seth said. "Let's test it. Sister, can you model a barge and send it flying, so to speak?"

Sister Roberta quickly reached into the library and found the full technical blueprints for a barge. She mirrored the hull and obtained something that looked like a giant metallic sausage.

"That looks charming! What's the capacity?" asked sister Joseph.

"40,000 tons," sister Roberta answered and entered a different program into the compiler. The room changed again and they found themselves on the beach, with the barge floating close to the shore.

"How are we going to follow it, it's going to disappear from view in a few seconds?" asked sister Jesse.

"I'll move the reference system with it, we'll stay at the distance we are now for the entire trip," sister Roberta answered.

"What if it falls on my head during the jump? Do you know how far it's going to be carried by inertia?" sister Joseph mumbled, displeased.

"That's what the calculations are for, I can drop it with a half inch accuracy," sister Roberta answered proudly.

_"Show off,"_ sister Joseph thought to herself, but the very busy Roberta chose not to reply.

"Ready? Here goes..." They all embarked on a very fast race, reached the transition point and jumped with the barge, slightly slanting to the side to compensate for the centripetal force. The barge settled steadily on the new course, giving them a little whiplash because of the change in speed, then zoomed through the waves and parked itself neatly next to a dock.

"Wow, good thing it's made of metal," Seth commented, dizzy, "are you sure we didn't need protective gear for this?" she asked.

"Yes, just give the grains inside your inner ear some time to settle down, it's like an amusement park movie ride, I deactivated most of the physical parameters to be on the safe side," sister Roberta answered.

"So, how much time do you need to get the prototype to the other islands?" Seth pressed Roberta, who didn't answer, but frowned as her mind ran a few rough calculations for the timetable. "Just remember the last launch, you never think your work is ready," Seth insisted.

Sister Roberta ended the program and they all found themselves in the glazed hall with stone floors. All around them the lush vegetation of Terra Two was basking in the warm light of two suns.

"I can send the maps and public transit blueprints now so they can start construction on the receiving docks and follow up with the cargo ship parameters later," sister Roberta finally answered.

The children were assembled behind the glass doors since it was almost time for class and were staring with enchanted curiosity at the sisters who disappeared and reappeared in the prayer room as Roberta kept switching between programs.

"I wonder where they went," Jenna commented, curious.

"I bet they're building a new shuttle, a much faster one, you know? To take us out there," Lily asked, pointing at the studded chocolate sky and following a dream in her mind.

"You've already been out there," Jimmy said.

"The out there we're not able to reach yet," Lily said. "You know, beyond the observable universe, and in real time, not in the past" she said, starry eyed.

Seth and Roberta heard her through the interlink and felt like the completion of this major transportation project was such small potatoes compared to the expectations the children had of them. _"Beyond the observable universe? Really? The children thought we could do that?!"_ Seth gasped in disbelief.

_"I guess now we have to,"_ sister Roberta replied perfectly poised. If anybody else had made that comment Seth would have thought it a joke, but she knew Roberta meant it, in fact her face already had that detached look that accompanied her mental analysis.

***

The problem of having too much free time never transpired while Sarah was growing up, back on Earth everybody was busy all the time and not being engaged in some sort of activity seemed suspect and sinful. As a child she was busy with school and the farm, early in her youth she was busy getting a degree, later on she was busy innovating in Perpignan and bringing life into the dirt of Terra Two. She wasn't busy anymore, for a long time now, and her well intentioned efforts seemed to be more of a hindrance than a worthwhile activity on their automated farm.

In the strange eternity of Terra Two Sarah's life had remained frozen in that enthusiastic stretch of youth when one believes one has the duty to overcome every challenge in the world. Her emotional make-up predisposed her to daring and adventure and she felt whatever she did was not enough and the wondrous gift the immortals bestowed on her was worthy of so much more.

It never occurred to the redhead that people were willing to travel twenty light years to visit her lab and that the concoctions that emerged from behind the louvered shutters would have earned her deference and authority from any prestigious university. After so many years of working with the sisters she finally realized their simple life was not a penance, but a gift: the gift of being unencumbered by ego, of allowing oneself to see life change, of doing things for the pure joy of doing them, of shunning the impossible.

Between her chemistry lessons with the children, her experiments in the lab and her beloved herb garden Sarah was happy without even knowing it, in a way that only people who are not subjected to the tyranny of time can be. Life on Terra Two was beautiful indeed, not only because their little island was a lush vision of paradise, but because the people who were living on it made it so.

Since she had asked the immortals about the meaning of life and found out they didn't know the answer either Sarah concluded it was a fool's errand to search for life's meaning and enjoyed living it instead.

### Chapter Eleven

### Of Mentoring

Seth stopped in front of the door. Of all the activities she had ever been engaged in, and goodness knows there were many, mentoring children was the one she felt least qualified for. The leader was a very direct person and she carried this frankness into every relationship. This won her discontent from some and loyalty from others. The one thing she wasn't good at was the gentle handling of emotions, and in the case of children this was a task as delicate as dancing among ancient crystal shells.

She gazed through the glass enclosure and saw Lily staring right at her, getting more and more tense because of the delay. Seth swallowed her misgivings and opened the door, with a severe stare in her eyes and the remnants of a frown on her forehead.

Lily, who was born confident, didn't bat an eyelash and shuffled a little in her chair to find a more comfortable position. The girl rested her hands on the armrests, completely poised, and presented to the leader an open stance, with straightened relaxed shoulders and an upturned chin. She smiled and stared right back into Seth's eyes. The latter suppressed a pleased grin. _"Good,"_ she thought, " _I won't have to teach her proper posture or coddle her insecurities, this might go well after all!"_ Sarah heard her through the interlink and offered a reproach but the leader ignored her.

"So, they sent you to me for advice," Seth broke the ice.

"Yes," Lily smiled broader. "Sarah thought you would be the best person to mentor me."

_"She didn't!"_ Seth was instantly infuriated and made a mental note to give the redhead a harsh talking to later for putting her on the hook. "Why do you think that is?" she asked Lily, with as much gentleness as she could muster through her emotional upset.

"You are a great leader," the girl answered simply, with no intention to flatter.

"Is that something you are interested in?" Seth continued.

"I don't know, everybody says that's what I should do because I'm good at it," Lily said, with a hint of doubt in her voice.

"I noticed," Seth bought herself some time. Everybody had noticed, Lily had the authority and daring of a general and the sisters wondered if they shouldn't funnel some of the activities that tended to be put off indefinitely to her, she seemed to be able to persuade the children to do almost anything. Seth frowned at the thought of _'anything'_ , which tends to cover a lot of territory. She looked at Lily again. The girl didn't seem impressed by her own abilities, which was good in the sense that she wasn't given to pride and bad in the sense that she behaved like her heart wasn't in it.

"Is that something you are interested in?" Seth repeated the question, ceasing any other thought to allow Lily to concentrate on it.

Lily looked out the window for a second, searching her mind for an answer. She didn't find it, so she didn't respond.

"Ok," Seth said. "Let's start differently. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you wake up in the morning?"

"Oh, I don't know, a bunch of stuff, most of it unpleasant. Things people said, stuff that didn't get done, that low grade I got in astrophysics, eating what I don't like for breakfast," she started enumerating but Seth stopped her immediately.

"Let's set aside what you want to do when you grow up, after all Sarah is right, you can be everything at least once and still have plenty of time to get bored," the leader said. Lily stared at Seth confused.

"The easiest way to weed out unpleasantness from your thinking is to address yourself as if you were another person. If you were talking to your friend or your mother would you start every morning with what she did wrong, feed her things she doesn't like and put her down over less than stellar performance?" Seth asked rhetorically.

"No, that would be horrible, why would I want to do that?" Lily jumped, bothered.

"That's the point of the exercise," Seth said. She breathed a sigh of relief that she acquitted herself well of her duty and set up another meeting for next week.

The entire community woke up the next morning to an eerie sight: two feet above the ocean surface, floating in thin air, hovered a perfectly round glass globe, like the ones children shake to watch snow fall on miniature buildings and Nativity scenes. Inside the globe a flurry of white rose petals sprung from an unseen source and saturated the air for miles with heavenly fragrance. At the bottom of the globe, on a bed of silky sea foam that moved with the lightest breeze lay an angelic creature whose skin glowed and whose hair was the purest blue, smiling contentedly and snacking on diminutive wild strawberries fed to her one by one by a flock of rainbow lyrebirds. The heavenly creature sketched a mischievous smile and greeted everyone in Lily's voice.

Lily's parents had endured the lion's share of the shock earlier when they woke up to find this person who insisted was their daughter in their kitchen. The first actions on Lily's list were to make herself four years older and eight inches taller, reshape her body to ideal proportions and achieve mastery in ballet. She threw in the blue hair for good measure, since she always wanted to try Sarah's drinkable hair dye but was told she was too young and was wearing a surreal gown made of water that stuck to her body as if held up by magnets.

Sarah experienced the spectacle bent over laughing and every time she looked at the eerie contraption she burst out again. Lily's visual commentary was so to the point that the redhead didn't even think to find the brains and hands behind this set-up, Sys, obviously, and chide her for participating. She raised her eyes just in time to see three sparkling dragons lift Lily out of the globe on a lectica that seemed to be made of pure light.

"Lily, what in the..." Seth exploded with laughter.

"Lily met with me this morning, I am Etherea, the soul of the wind. Lily likes me a lot, she said I should eat only wild berries and sleep on clouds. She always loved my graceful countenance," the girl formerly known as Lily stood up and twirled in a flourish of pirouettes, none of which touched the ground.

"Could you please tell Lily to get back to me as soon as it is convenient for her? I would like to continue the discussion we started yesterday," Seth asked smiling.

"Lily would be pleased to do that," Etherea curtsied graciously.

_"Mercy me,"_ Seth thought, _"sister Joseph is right. These kids have no regard for authority!"_

***

"I hope you enjoyed being an autocratic overlord," Seth asked a few hours later when a normal looking Lily arrived to the Prayer Hall, featuring the correct age, height and hair.

"I was wondering," Lily started without skipping a beat, "if there is something you'd like to share with me about your experiences, for instance what did you feel when you decided to come here, were you afraid?"

"Yes, of course. I wouldn't trust anybody who wasn't because they probably wouldn't be sane. But if you knew me better you would ask what it felt like to carry the responsibility of bringing everybody else here with me," Seth answered very softly. "Every decision of consequence is pummeled by doubt."

"That's what I was trying to say about my mornings," Lily commented.

"No, that's just mental refuse," Seth contradicted her with a harsher tone that she would have wished. "There is no value in putting yourself down and hating your food. Many people confuse challenging with valuable, don't waste any effort on unprocessed thought."

"Do you think I'd make a good leader?" Lily asked directly.

"I don't know, " Seth hesitantly responded. The most representative aspect of their life on Terra Two were the expectant possibilities, this clear path always within reach, not so challenging to make one lose heart but not so easy that it didn't dazzle, always revealing just one small step ahead as if their destiny were leading them across the raging river of life from stepping stone to stepping stone.

"Sister Roberta is engineering a replica of Sys's subatomic particle modeler," she continued. "I don't know how this is going to affect our society but it seems to me in light of the infinite possibilities this tool opens that it becomes a priority to learn how to make our own wishes and desires beneficial. There is no greater test of leadership than being in charge of your own mind. What do you dream about?" she asked Lily.

"What's out there, beyond the visible horizon," Lily answered with an enthusiasm that made it obvious she had given this issue a lot of thought.

"I guess at this point your prospect is very possible," Seth answered thoughtfully, staring deeply into Lily's eyes to learn as much about the girl's vision of the future as her thoughts could reach.

***

_"Did you mean that advice about looking at yourself as if you were another person?"_ Sarah asked through the interlink, amused.

_"You didn't really think my parents named me Seth, did you?"_ the leader answered calmly. Sarah had never questioned whether the leader's name was Seth, just why. This comes to prove that one can spend two centuries with somebody listening to their every thought and still find unknowns buried under the deep.

_"So, what did you tell Seth first thing in the morning?"_ Sarah pushed, amused.

_"Why don't you mentor Lily and then I'll make fun of you?"_ the leader answered.

_"It seems she already knows what she wants to do, don't you think?"_ Sarah continued.

_"Thankfully. I'm horrible at giving advice,"_ Seth confessed. _"Why did you volunteer me, anyway, I wanted to talk to you about that! I've never sweated more in my life, it feels like one of those dreams when you find yourself taking a test you didn't prepare for."_

_"It's good to push your comfort zone every now and then,"_ Sarah smiled. _"Besides, it seems pretty obvious you are the best person to guide her, she is so much like you!"_

***

Seth walked through the virtual model of the purple language and the sinuous three dimensional weave sang like crystal as her fingers touched it. She kept refining the music by adding more thickness to some curves and slimming others, tensioning some of the lines and allowing others to flow freely like soft fuzzy waterfalls. The landscape of this strange crystal web was so familiar to her she could walk through it with her eyes closed without touching any strand unless she really wanted to.

"What does it say?" Sarah asked. Seth turned around to see the redhead slide her fingers over one of the thin strings closest to her and make the entire web resonate like a glass violin.

"You just played _'How wonder up like high the world above',"_ the leader smiled.

"I thought this whole thing was an already written text," Sarah replied, surprised.

"It is," said Seth.

"Then how could I play something that makes no sense?" the redhead asked.

"You are thinking like a human. Do you remember those old movies about the inhabitants of flatland who only perceived two dimensions?" she asked.

"Are you telling me I was playing the shadow of a coherent message?" Sarah inquired.

"No, I'm telling you that you can only perceive the shadow of the coherent message you just played, however we can reassemble the multi-dimensional text from all its three dimensional projections. The message you touched has four lines of harmony," Seth clarified, "and it says

'Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

How I wonder what you are!

Up above the world so high,

Like a diamond in the sky.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

_How I wonder what you are!'_ "

"Twinkle-twinkle?" Sarah grinned. "Really?"

"I told you it was complicated," Seth continued, slightly annoyed at the lack of enthusiasm. "What are you doing here, anyway?" she continued brusquely.

_"Nice to see you too!"_ the redhead quietly revolted.

"I'm sorry," the leader continued gently. "What's up?"

"Sister Roberta has a rough prototype for the subatomic particle modulator, she asked everyone to come over for the test run."

### Chapter Twelve

### Of Alchemy

"I'm telling you they invented a time machine!" Jenna announced, excited.

"No, silly! There is no such thing, they are testing the alchemy equipment," Lily replied with a very assured tone and a somewhat superior attitude. Jimmy burst out laughing.

"Why are you laughing?" Lily said outraged. Sister Novis passed them by and ran towards Roberta's lab. "Sister, what are you working on?" Lily asked her.

"An alchemy device," sister Novis answered, then picked up the pace and smiled enigmatically.

"See?" Lily turned towards Jimmy who stopped laughing at her and focused on getting a better view through the back windows. He only wished he could get inside the lab to experience the events first hand but alas sister Jesse was guarding the front door like a smiling incarnation of the Cerberus. The rules were clear, no children were allowed in for the experiment, which was so unfair because Sys was there to fine-tune the machine. Jimmy noticed a draft had pushed the back door open and slid through it before it slammed shut, then showed up on the other side of the window pane gesturing to Lily and Jenna to come in. Quiet as whispers the girls tiptoed inside the lab and hid behind one of the tables, all eyes and grins and stifling giggles.

In the center of the lab stood the contraption, a table sized set of titanium alloy spherical mirrors constantly washed by the thin film of a viscous liquid. Sarah was standing next to sister Roberta commenting on last minute details and trying to fix a stubborn strand of Sys's hair. Um shuffled to free itself from excessive maternal doting an focused on the dishes, a little anxious about the possible results of the experiment. All around them the sisters were rushing to adjust settings and set-up the data stream for the experiment.

Sister Mary-Francis walked so close to Jimmy's toes she almost stepped on them. The little boy moved quickly out of the way, knocking over a little aluminum cup in the process. The cup wobbled on the metal counter but the noise got lost in the racket and excitement of the room. Jimmy breathed out slowly, looking at Lily and Jenna who were gesturing to him to keep quiet.

"Are we ready?" Seth asked as she approached the central space. Sister Roberta was still fussing about, nervous as she always was before trying new technology. She was mumbling under her breath raising the tension in the room and making the other sisters go over all the possible mishaps of this endeavor. Sarah thought having Sys there was a terrible idea even though Seth had explained to her that if anything went wrong um would be the only being able to fix it.

"You don't want to spend the rest of eternity as an energy ball, do you?" the leader had asked the redhead. Sarah didn't respond but thought if not for the immortals that was probably what she would be right now. She then remembered people were supposed to have bodies in the afterlife, made of a different essence but bodies nevertheless. She pondered on what a body would look like if it were made of pure energy, then considered the particle/wave duality and realized there is not such a clear distinction between energy and matter anyway, at least not at a very small scale.

_"Focus!"_ the leader snapped the redhead out of her reverie over the nature of Heaven. _"Sister Roberta is about to change air into potatoes, I think that's worth your attention!"_

_"Why potatoes?"_ Sarah wondered quietly.

_"Because gold would have been too cliché,"_ the leader answered through the interlink, then continued out loud. "When can we start, sister, it's noon already!"

Sister Roberta took a deep breath and gave the machine the instructions to start. A potato congealed slowly adjusting its spin as more matter was added to it and its axis of inertia kept shifting.

"Can you turn it into something else?" sister Benedict asked? Sister Roberta turned the potato into a bubble of coffee. The sight of coffee pushed Sarah back in contemplative mode and she wondered if there was an equivalent of coffee in the thereafter. She liked coffee. And cats. Seth's fearsome stare brought her back to reality.

Sister Roberta noted with relief that the experiment was a success, reverted the coffee to thin air and turned the mirrors off. A polished rock instantly materialized and fell to the floor exactly half way between the mirrors. The sisters went dead silent, staring at the byproduct and trying to understand how the machine defied the law of conservation of mass.

"You called it an alchemy machine, what do you expect?" sister Joseph retorted annoyed.

"I'm sure there is a lot of atmospheric gas in that rock," Seth offered.

"Actually there isn't," sister Roberta responded with a baffled look on her face. "The system was closed, I created an isolating field around it, I didn't want us to turn into potatoes too."

"Pumpkins, more likely!" sister Joseph commented, morose.

"Maybe it took energy from the isolating field," Seth offered.

"No, it didn't, I monitored the energy readings, they remained constant," sister Roberta answered.

"Is it possible that it was brought in from somewhere else? Remember how your energy bubble brought Jimmy from the beach?" the leader asked. Jimmy tried not to look excited about having had that experience while Lily and Jenna gave him envious stares.

"I guess at this point anything is possible, but this specific scenario is highly unlikely," the sister commented.

"Can you tell us what it is without touching it?" Seth asked.

"Of course. It's basaltic rock, green, it looks like," sister Roberta described.

"No! Good thing my eyes didn't deceive me, it really is a green rock!" sister Joseph mocked.

"I doesn't seem radioactive," Roberta continued. "For all I can tell it's just a rock."

"There is no green basalt on this planet," sister Felix said matter of fact and all the eyes in the room focused on her.

"Are you sure?" Seth asked.

"Of course I'm sure, I do all the geological analysis. I have not found green basalt anywhere, come to think of it there is no basalt at all."

"Is the machine off, sister?" Seth asked Roberta who nodded in agreement. The leader bent down and picked up the mineral. The unassuming specimen stared her in the face asserting its disobedience to the laws of physics. It was polished to a lustrous shine and reflected its surroundings like a parabolic mirror.

"What do you make of this?" Seth turned to Roberta in hope of an answer. The sister shrugged. Seth carefully placed the rock on the table. "Do you know what it is?" she asked Sys.

Um shook its head 'no'. "Can I keep it?" it asked, excited. Seth agreed and Sys quickly grabbed the polished rock and placed it in its pocket.

***

Seth came back to the lab a little later after everybody else had gone to find sister Roberta trying to figure out the physical impossibility puzzle. Between mid-day and late afternoon the sister had repeated the experiment a number of times and got random results at its completion. Sometimes she ended up with thin air as anticipated and other times a piece of mineral would manifest. There was a little pile of colorful rocks growing at her feet, not all of them green but all very hard, some crystalline and looking like black glass, some speckled with red and green dots, like porphyry, some dull brick red, like the dirt of the planet, some slate gray with blue undertones. All were polished to a perfect mirror finish and the light of the setting suns made the quartz particles sparkle. For a moment there Seth thought she saw the pile glow with its own inner light.

"How many times did you run this experiment?" she asked with astonishment.

"About twice as many times as you can count rocks in that pile. The laws of physics may no longer apply but the ones of probability sure do!" sister Roberta answered, frustrated. She groaned at the end of another experiment when she heard the now familiar thump of a bright orange potato shaped rock with mica speckles dropping to the floor. "I can't stand random stuff!" she started another experiment and her thunderous stare made clear to the leader that she would rather not have an audience.

Seth picked up a bunch of rocks and headed for the door.

"Have you talked to Sarah at all? It would be helpful if we knew the exact composition of this material, she can analyze it," the leader said upon exiting in a well intentioned attempt to be helpful.

_"Suit yourself,"_ the sister thought but didn't answer, eager to be left alone.

***

"I assume you are studying the composition of the rock," Seth said as she entered Sarah's lab. Sys and Sarah were so absorbed in the infinitesimal world they gazed at through their microscopes they didn't pay attention to the leader until she dropped the rocks on the metal countertops causing booming clatter. "I brought you more samples. Poor sister Roberta is at her wit's end, not being able to figure out any rules about this stuff is driving her nuts."

"It's not a rock," Sarah said and returned to her microscope in silence.

"Care to elaborate on that?" the leader asked, annoyed by the half answer.

"I wish I could," Sarah answered. "It is matter, I think."

"What else would it be?" Seth retorted.

"Precisely," the redhead answered. Sys stuck to her microscope almost immobile, except for her hand which scribbled symbols and formulas with great speed. "Take a look," Sarah encouraged the leader. Seth adjusted the lens to see something that almost looked like an atomic structure in the sense that it had a _'nucleus'_ surrounded by a completely random electronic cloud. The opposite charge particles combined and split up every now and then for no apparent reason and the electrons ran wild, unencumbered by belonging to a particular orbital zone, occasionally passing straight through the _'nucleus'_ as if it didn't exist.

"This rock doesn't exist!" the leader blurted, fascinated.

"Sure it does. Try not to drop it on your foot, it's heavy," Sarah chuckled.

"I saw an electron run through the nucleus," Seth continued, shocked.

"Ah, no strong forces, you noticed!" answered the redhead.

"What keeps the nucleus from falling apart?" the leader asked.

"I don't know," Sarah answered. "You could ask me what keeps the particles together too. But they are not really particles, or nuclei."

"Why are the rocks different colors?" Seth asked, but before getting an answer she noticed that the bright orange rock in her palm was now sage green, with glassy red and black dots.

***

_"I understand how one might take leave of one's senses in light of what we've just experienced,"_ sister Joseph graced the interlink with a warm conciliatory tone, _"but it's almost seven."_

Seth and Sarah got up and walked briskly through the night towards the Prayer Hall. The imposing building looked like a giant light fixture all glazed as it was and lit from inside. What beautiful nights Terra Two had, Sarah thought. Warm and fragrant, with a million different sounds carried by the humid air, dazzling metallic stars above their heads and the eerie radiance of the giant lime green moon that always circled the horizon but never rose above their heads.

"We're late, she's gonna gives us the third degree!" sister Jove said, panting; the sister was running to catch up with them and her footsteps dragged through the powdery dust startling Solomon who was following Sarah like a shadow.

_"She won't. Not tonight."_ Seth thought softly. They ran up the stairs and passed through several sets of glass doors as they advanced into the entrails of the Prayer Hall. At the last set of doors Solomon stopped, curled up on a plush mat that was laid down especially for him and waited.

Their late arrival disturbed the contemplative mindset sisters aspired to achieve during service; sister Joseph didn't say anything but frowned, displeased. Vespers had reached the daily reading and sister Therese's narration flowed soft and soothing like a river of thought approaching an estuary.

_"...Through faith we understand that the worlds came into being, and still exist, at the command of God, so that what is seen does not owe its existence to that which is visible..."_ (*Hebrews 11:3)

Vespers unfolded as they did every night and as she recited the final prayers Seth noticed that she was still holding the rock in her palm and that the mineral had turned rosy and translucent like pink quartz. She placed it gently on the ground in front of her, the rock that didn't exist, and watched it glow dimly in the diffuse light of the room as worry and care dissipated and she contemplated a vision of the world the way it was and always shall be, perfect and at peace.

### Chapter Thirteen

### Of Here and There

Months passed over the community, common and run of the mill as much as anything could be run of the mill on Terra Two. The sisters focused on the fields, Sarah immersed herself in her apothecary work, Seth kept working on the language, the kids grew and the cats ruled the land, moving quietly through the lush landscape, their presence only given away by the fragrant cloud emanating from their fur.

The sisters' peaceful routine was often interrupted by groups of visitors from Earth, research teams and vacationers alike who unfailingly found their way into the Prayer Hall to the dismay of sister Joseph and the confusion of the fragrant felines frazzled by the focused interest and constantly in search of hidden nooks and crannies where they could observe the scene undisturbed.

Solomon strolled the glazed hallways every morning, quiet as a shadow but with the confidence of an old hand; the tip of his tail curled slightly at the end like a question mark and his impeccably groomed coffee colored fur seemed to be inspired by Terra Two's sunsets. He passed through the kitchen where a saucer of fresh milk and a gourmet breakfast were waiting for him and then found his way out to chase and stalk little birds and mice.

That morning he jumped on the wide kitchen sill and squeezed through a window left ajar to sun himself at the base of the decorative sundial in the center of the herb garden. The sundial was one of sister Roberta's little fun projects, quite challenging in fact, given the intricate sun paths and the varying yearly cycles. The result of her research and ingenuity was a little gem with no moving parts that not only told the time, but also the month, the day and the year of the 25 year cycle, and the little shallow bird bath around its base monitored the water evaporation rate, oscillating between fifty two and eighty seven percent atmospheric water saturation with the precision of a Swiss clock. Around the base of the sundial the frustrated sister had disposed of the colorful results of her most recent research, a generous pile of rocks which were hitting just the right note in the kitchen garden landscape. Sarah arranged them neatly every morning to provide a border for the rhubarb and cabbage patches even though rainwater kept washing away the dirt and pushing them out into the pathway.

Solomon was not impressed by such fine details but enjoyed the slightly elevated position of the warm soap stone which provided a perfect location to stake out prey and catch small critters unaware. To Sarah's chagrin he often brought offerings to the kitchen door after a hunt, to share with her and show appreciation.

The cat's sparkling blue eyes were focused on the movement of the foliage and its dark chocolate ears scanned the surroundings for the faintest sound. He saw something slide slowly under a wide rhubarb leaf and pounced on it, all fangs and claws. His teeth clattered in the air, holding on to nothing but the rhubarb greenery. As he stared under the broad leaf one of the rocks shifted a foot, ending up behind him somehow and changing color again.

Solomon had not been briefed on the fundamental nature of the rocks and he didn't care about their dematerializing and rematerializing means of travel, he was just annoyed by the fact that he couldn't catch the swift moving targets, quite embarrassing for a cat of his standing. After about twenty minutes of what looked like chasing his tail he attracted the attention of a large group of curious onlookers who by means unknown had made their way into the cloistered garden and were staring aghast at dancing rocks melting into thin air and reemerging a few feet away, changing their color and shape while the poor cat was using all its hunting skills to try and catch them.

Because sister Roberta, Sys and Sarah were still trying to figure out how the rocks came to be in the first place and the obvious source of information, Purple, had no idea about this phenomenon, Seth didn't think to share the unusual occurrences with the visitors who were now staring at the show, stunned and pinching themselves to make sure they weren't dreaming.

_"Mercy me, Seth! Did you know the rocks could move by themselves?"_ Sarah spoke quickly through the interlink while making her way out the kitchen into the garden to provide the startled audience with an explanation.

_"No, I did not,"_ the leader conceded. _"Define movement,"_ she continued.

_"Changing position in space,"_ Sarah clarified.

_"Without any help?"_ Seth asked.

_"I don't know, maybe it's the sunlight,"_ Sarah theorized.

_"Maybe. Can you attend to the visitors? The lady in the polka dotted hat looks like she's going to have a conniption."_ The plump lady in question was fussing about to express astonishment and disapproval of the moving minerals with way too many words and an accusatory tone, swearing off the idea of this uncontrollable planet where nothing was normal.

Sarah smiled encouragingly as she approached the trespassers; she attempted to minimize the unease generated by the jumping rock show by picking up Solomon and petting his fur. The cat shuffled in her arms, trying to free himself and continue his very frustrating hunting of the wind.

"You must be lost, this is the cloistered garden, reserved for the members of our order," Sarah bent the truth simultaneously remembering the unruly hoards of children that traipsed along the paths and through the flower beds at all times of day. "Let me show you to our exhibits," she smiled and gestured towards the hallway that lead back into the public area.

"What is that?" the plump lady articulated with a light lisp and pointed incriminatingly to the moving rocks.

"We don't know for sure, we're still studying them," Sarah answered pleasantly.

"What do you mean, you don't know? Does it seem normal to you that the rocks are moving on their own?"

"Actually we are in the process of figuring this out, we just need more time for research," Sarah tried to explain.

"I won't even try to conjecture what kind of practices end up with objects moving around by themselves! I knew it was a terrible idea to come here but nobody listens to me. I want to speak to the person in charge, this is completely unacceptable, we traveled a long way to this accursed planet which I was told was the cradle of miraculous discoveries, and now I see heathen work," she continued in one breath, louder and louder, and Sarah could find no break in her tirade to interject an answer.

_"You know who would be the best person to appease our visitor's concern?"_ Seth commented mischievously through the interlink.

_"I have an idea,"_ Sarah answered, suppressing a grin to avoid inflaming the lady's outrage.

_"Don't you dare bring the shrew to me!"_ sister Joseph jumped immediately. _"Take her to Roberta, that would teach her!"_

_"Teach who, Roberta or the visitor?"_ Seth inquired.

_"Both,"_ sister Joseph decreed.

"Am I being ignored?" the visitor exploded, very red in the face and with a vicious look in her eyes.

"On the contrary, I was just thinking who would be the best person to provide you with information on this subject and I'm sure our sister Joseph can answer all your questions," Sarah smiled. "This way, please!"

_"I'll get you for this!"_ sister Joseph roared through the interlink.

_"Don't forget to mention the cat is two hundred years old,"_ Seth added, seriously.

The little group advanced towards the common areas with the polka dotted hat lady leading the pack very self-assured and bellicose while the rest of the visitors followed rather unconvinced, wishing they could spend a little more time watching a cat hunt disappearing rocks.

***

"So, they do not have strong forces but they respond to gravity. What about electro-magnetic charges?"

"I can't tell, but there seem to be almost no emissions," sister Roberta posited.

"And the system is stable, not decaying," Seth checked again.

"Yes," sister Roberta answered.

"I assume it would be an absurd question to ask about the chemical make-up of this material," the leader continued.

"It is not a material, so yes," sister Roberta agreed.

"What is it then?" Seth insisted on her original question. "If we can see it and touch it it's got to be real, rules or no. And why was it moving around in the garden but not here?"

"It's got to be photonic excitation, the particles aren't held by anything, they must be really easy to knock around."

"How did it materialize, did you figure it out?" the leader asked, hopefully.

Roberta shuffled around the machine, trying to organize the information in explainable form.

"It's somewhat similar to electroplating. You know how pearls build around minute specs of sand?" she started.

"You mean we could mold them to any shape we want? Make cups and flower pots for instance?" Seth laughed.

"No. You'd be chasing them around the kitchen and garden and the containers would move and change shape depending on what they build themselves around and the content would be left behind to spill on the ground," sister Roberta analyzed the utility in all seriousness.

"Can we modify them with tools? Drill holes, for instance, or slice them?" Seth asked.

Sister Roberta took the laser saw through the middle of a large rock. The light sliced clean through the rock, making it glow for a while, but didn't leave a dent. At the end of the procedure the rock dissolved and reappeared on the top shelf of the unit behind them. The two had to spend a few minutes to locate it.

"I give up," Seth said.

"Have you tried to dissolve them?" asked Jimmy, who had been there the whole time.

"Dissolve them in what?" sister Roberta asked.

"Water," Jimmy said.

Sister Roberta took a beaker, filled it with water and dropped a small rock in it. Nothing happened, so she put it away, planned to clean it up later and in the excitement of the other experiments she was running forgot all about it.

***

"Didn't you only put one rock in the beaker?" Jimmy asked, staring at the transparent jug three days later.

"I did," sister Roberta said, focused on her data stream.

"I think you should look at the jug, the rocks are going to overflow," Jimmy said seriously.

"Sometimes, Jimmy..." sister Roberta started to protest at the interruption when a couple of rocks fell from the top shelf making a racket. There was no water left in the beaker but it was filled to the brim with colorful rocks that maintained a very precarious balance hanging on for dear life around the glass rim.

_"I think you'd better come here,"_ the sister called tentatively through the interlink.

_"Are you talking to me?"_ Seth asked.

_"Yes. Can you please bring Sarah and Sys too? They've got to see this!"_ Roberta followed dispassionately.

_"I knew you were up to something. What is it now? Are we losing the atmosphere? Is the planet breaking away from orbit? Did Sarah get to a communal activity on time?"_ sister Joseph inquired.

_"No. The rocks self-replicated. Just add water,"_ sister Roberta informed her.

***

"Remind me not to do this anywhere near the ocean," sister Roberta spoke softly.

"You don't think it's possible! Jimmy, did any of the children throw rocks into the ocean?" Seth asked.

"No, sister," Jimmy answered convincingly.

"Jimmy, this is very important, in one year we won't have any water left!" sister Joseph prophesied apocalyptically.

"Don't worry, sister, we can scan the ocean floor and pick them out before they hatch, besides Purple would have said something," Sarah attempted to chase away the end-times visual.

"Purple doesn't know everything! What is it about you, sister," Joseph turned to Roberta, really irate, "that pushes you right to the edge of total annihilation! Every morning I wake up in a cold sweat terrified of what you might come up with next!"

_"I scanned the ocean floor and found four rocks. I'll send a team to collect them right now,"_ sister deAngelis announced through the interlink.

"Always fixing things, I've had it with you!" sister Joseph jumped to her feet and ran out the door furious.

"Have you tried putting them back in the machine?" Seth asked as if nothing had happened.

"Yes, they combine with whatever I'm making at the time, however at the end of the experiment I get another rock or not," sister Roberta answered, frustrated.

"Well, I'll leave you to it," Seth yawned. "How is the yield?" she asked sister Therese. The meeting switched gears suddenly to a brief presentation of the present month's farming activities. Sister Joseph sent the veterinary and zootechnical report through the interlink, still fuming and complaining that she broke her bones in vain on this God forsaken planet for centuries only to see it evaporated by one of sister Roberta's diabolical discoveries. Sister Roberta acknowledged the complaint. The report was great, their feathered and four legged companions were flourishing in splendid health grace to sister Joseph's magical touch, she really had the animal whisperer's gift.

"Did you arrange the details for next month's transport?" Seth asked.

"Yes, we have six hundred thirty ton containers vacuum sealed and ready to go. Mostly grains, some nuts, and of course vanilla."

"How many containers of vanilla?" the leader inquired.

"Thirty four."

"Impressive. Any livestock?" she continued.

"Not at this time. Sister Joseph is working on three chicken breeds, but they are not ready yet."

"Weather?" the leader pressed on.

"82F, 52-87% humidity, wind speed 4mph, daily precipitation 0.125in/day."

"StreamPath?" she turned to Roberta.

"Up and running, we're coordinating with the other islands. We had several cargo transports, all clear."

"Glad we talked. See you!" the leader said abruptly, got up and left.

"Bye!" the sisters managed to reply in the wake of her departure, like an echo following a speeding train.

### Chapter Fourteen

### Of Useless Yuck

"So", sister Roberta went over the findings again, "they form around microscopic aberrations in the atmospheric molecular structure, they are impacted by photons, they multiply in water (I guess they are not responding to the water itself, but the same aberrations, only in liquid form), and they have no strong forces."

"Why is the water consumed in the process when air is not?" Sarah asked.

"Maybe it evaporates because of the generated heat?" sister Roberta attempted an answer.

Seth and Sarah gave her a disbelieving look.

"Yeah, I guess you are right, I really don't know," the sister replied.

"And are you sure they're not radioactive?" Seth pressed.

"They emit nothing. Sarah puts out more gamma radiation than those rocks," Roberta assured her.

_"No kidding! I'm not convinced cat-brains is even human anymore with all them undead lobsters running through her veins,"_ sister Joseph remarked. The observation made Sarah very uncomfortable, so Seth constructed a well thought out commentary and threw it back at sister Joseph in silence.

"Why aren't Sys's palms creating side effects?" the redhead continued.

"The original technology is flawless, our reverse engineered product is still under development, I'm missing something, a filter maybe or a set of tolerances that need to be tightened, I don't know," sister Roberta answered thoughtfully.

"What does Purple think?" Seth asked Sys.

"Humans. Slow." Purple said through the robot.

"Anything actually useful?" Seth replied irked.

"Energy. Adjust." Purple answered annoyed.

"I thought you didn't know what this was," the leader commented.

"Not. Know. Before." said Purple.

Sarah got lost in a tapestry of thought that combined vague memories and images of submerged landscapes with beautifully shimmering purple fields and light dancing in the variable density of the turquoise ocean water. The patterns of the fields were shifting gracefully, she could feel their redundant long strands run through her bloodstream like adrenaline, connecting discrete receptors to make her feel the answer rather than understand it in the same way a cat is aware of the movement of a scurrying mouse before it actively knows it's there.

"Try exactly 3.52739 mega joules. It weeds out the anomalies," the redhead told Roberta, who hurried to adjust the alchemy machine.

"What are we going to do with all the rocks, though?" Seth asked Sys.

"Kinetic. Art." Purple replied.

"You don't even know what that means!" Seth protested.

"Purple. Know." the immortals chortled.

"What are they, anyway?" Seth insisted. "They are not matter."

"Energetic. Waste." Purple answered.

"You mean to tell me there is no scientific advancement we can derive from studying a solid object unbound by the laws of physics?" Seth asked incredulously.

"You. Learn. Teach. Purple." Sys answered irritated. For an eternal databank of information Purple was strangely incurious and the human thirst for knowledge seemed to bore the microscopic immortals at times.

***

Sister Roberta was not one to let go of a subject that interested her for any reason, ever. Now with the controversial StreamPath up and running there was no deadline to prevent her from pursuing any avenue of research she saw fit.

She saw fit to spend all of her time studying the stones, which was not an easy task because the rocks couldn't be chipped to obtain smaller samples and the light of the microscope made them jump and disappear at the least convenient moment, leaving the frustrated sister with the task of searching for them throughout the lab, under tables, in cupboards, on top of shelving units, next to the sink, while the surreal minerals changed color and pattern thus becoming even harder to find.

Sarah couldn't resist the draw of this pseudo-physical puzzle either and she spent most of her time in Roberta's lab. The children had endless fun watching the two scour the lab on all fours trying to retrieve a wandering mineral that jumped like a frog the moment they tried to touch it.

_"Now I know how Solomon must feel!"_ Sarah thought.

_"Of course you do, you share his level of understanding,"_ sister Joseph retorted sharply.

Meanwhile Seth's language database was approaching the proportions of a sizable musical library inside which the "literary" pieces she put together became small symphonies of eerie music she occasionally performed for the community in small private concerts. Most of the sisters hadn't gone through the trouble of learning the new language since Purple communicated just fine in a language they already knew, so they didn't understand the nuances, the turns of phrase, the metaphors, they just listened to their musical translation, so beautiful and stirring it made one's soul ache.

Layers of sound overlapped them, enveloping their souls in yearning, love, triumph, pursuit, speaking directly to the heart in ways so pervasive that even sister Joseph wasn't immune to the influence and would be left sitting on the stone floors at the end of a concert with tears streaming down her face, looking like a strange statue dressed in her ceremonial garb and encased in the giant glass display of the Prayer Hall.

Sarah tried to enjoy the music with the rest of the sisters but her symbiotic companions always translated the stories into her limbic brain. It of course couldn't understand the difference between reading emotions and experiencing them and turned her into every character in every story. Sarah tried to imagine what it must be like to be Purple, to share a sea of emotions with billions of other beings in a way that really makes you them, forces you to experience their joy, their pain, their struggle and their achievements, makes you live billions of simultaneous lives. She got lost in thought pondering the philosophical implications of this broader level of understanding and her absentmindedness brought the grunt of sisterly admonition.

Sarah couldn't tear herself from the duality of her existence and she couldn't reconcile it either. Angel hair and immortal memories didn't mix in her psyche, like oil and water won't blend, and the two components of her being always reverted to the pure polarized states of host and symbiont to Purple's dismay. "You. Purple." was to become the bone of contention for decades to come and her microscopic company was simply offended that Sarah didn't appreciate the honor of sharing its immortal memory.

That evening they had gone through half of their weekly concert and the music was drenching Sarah's emotional landscape in a sad and moving story about missed opportunities and the meaning of courage when she jumped to her feet all of a sudden, shouting "They're WIMPS! They're WIMPS!", startling everyone and creating a roaring hubbub in the process.

"Who are wimps, dear?" sister Mary-Francis tried to appease her, not understanding the out of character outburst.

_"I told her to ease up on coffee! If you all don't understand why excess is a sin you can look at this frazzled mess and have your explanation!"_ sister Joseph thought, but not expressing the words aloud didn't help because everyone had their bracelets on. Seth stared at Sarah intently, waiting for an explanation.

"The stones, they're made of WIMPS!" Sarah spoke so softly none but the people closest to her could hear.

"As in weakly interacting massive particles?" Seth asked in a natural tone of voice. She talked about physically impossible feats with the same conversational tone she would use to say "Can you please pass the milk" or "Did anyone see my soil analyzer?"

"Are you sure it's dark matter? We shouldn't be seeing it..." sister Roberta jumped on the idea immediately.

"We don't see it, we see it's material 'atmosphere', it attracts whatever matter it can find in its gravitational field and coats the dark matter pockets just like you said," Sarah continued.

"Yuck. Energetic. Waste." Purple shuddered and Sarah was almost sure she could feel the immortals shuffle in distress while an intense sense of revulsion rose to the surface of her thoughts.

"Why do you dislike it so much? It's just stuff!" Sarah asked.

"Worthless. Filth. Water. Eaters." Purple growled and Seth made a mental note to ensure that the rocks will never for any reason get anywhere near the oceans that constituted the immortals' home.

***

"How can you be sure it is dark matter?" Seth asked Roberta.

"If it behaves like dark matter and scares Purple like dark matter, then it is dark matter," sister Roberta recited.

"Not. Afraid." Purple clarified. "Useless. Yuck."

"You know you sound just like sister Joseph now," Sarah had the misfortune to comment and she unleashed a downpour of epithets and criticism from the grouchy sister.

"Evil. Go. Through. Purple. Scramble. Think." Purple continued agitated.

"I don't understand," Sarah inquired gently.

"Gamma. Scramble. Purple. Crazy. No. Reason." Purple chattered.

"Are they interfering with your gamma frequency communications?" Sarah asked.

"Spoil. Everything. Boron. Structure. Gamma. Yuck. Evil." Purple replied outraged.

"Are they a danger to you?" Sarah asked worried.

"No. Purple. Digest. Yuck. Taste. Bad." Purple almost retched.

"You are mad at it because you don't like its taste?" Sarah burst with laughter.

"You. Taste. Garbage. Then. Laugh." Purple replied offended.

"Can we play with the rocks?" Jimmy asked. He was watching over Sarah's shoulder careful not to miss any details.

"What exactly did you have in mind?" Seth stared at him inquisitively.

"Well, we can try to strip the material coating and see what happens, I wonder if we can turn them into a liquid, that would be so cool, a liquid that flows through your palm!" the boy started dreaming.

"No, Jimmy!" the sisters protested in concert.

"But they move around by themselves," Jimmy tried to argue his case.

"Did anyone think of advising Earth headquarters just in case somebody brought home a little souvenir?" sister Jesse asked.

***

Who knows if Sys decided all by itself or Purple asked it to but um took over one of the smaller rooms around the perimeter of the Prayer Hall and turned it into a music studio. Um spent endless days and nights translating her pressure sensor readings and conversations with Purple into the most sophisticated three dimensional images and symphonic pieces humans had ever seen or heard. Just like its mother spent all her free moments in her beloved herbalist shop, um had made the music studio its second home.

Sys's desire to share the fascinating complexity it alone could experience turned into a prolific, steadfast and passionate commitment to creating beauty. Over night, for no apparent reason, Sys had become an accomplished artist.

Um's art form could not have existed before, it being outside the range of human perception, so um had to first create a new medium, another world that vibrated to its very essence with movement, sound and color. Um's art didn't have a name either because the beings who could have described it called it simply communication.

Sarah stopped by the studio often and forgot to leave, her Purple instincts attuned to the eerie environment, feeling the slow and melodious transformation of matter around her, watching the three dimensional patterns thicken and float like ribbons and veils in a gentle breeze, crash against her psyche like ocean waves on the rocks, paint pictures in her mind, separate her being from the flow of time.

"I've been looking all over for you!" Seth entered the studio and addressed Sarah in an impatient, slightly worried tone of voice. "You don't have your bracelet on? What if someone needed your help?"

"Yes." Sarah answered smiling.

"Yes, what? Sarah, you've been gone for fourteen hours, are you aware of that? It's almost time for Vespers, sister Roberta needed your expertise earlier, what are you doing here?"

"Shh... Listen!" Sarah admonished gently. "Just listen."

"This is... a treatise of quantum physics!"

"So beautiful!" Sarah answered blissfully.

"That explains in detail non-locality and particle entanglement. Do you know what this means?" the leader asked, mystified.

"That we can see beyond the limits of the visible universe?" Sarah answered enraptured.

"That's not exactly how far I would have taken the concept, but in principle yes."

"See? Lily's dream came true." Sarah smiled.

"You do scare me at times, you know?" Seth commented, unconvinced.

"We can't live for centuries bound to our human limitations. Didn't you ask what we were going to do with all this time?" the redhead asked in a poised, almost ethereal voice. For a brief moment Seth thought she saw purple glimmer dance in her fiery hair.

***

"I can't understand why you don't want me do this, it's so unfair!" Sys was arguing with Sarah who was adamant about her position on the issue.

"You can't possibly be serious! I don't care if you are practically indestructible, this is simply crazy!" the redhead became more and more agitated as her flushed cheeks made obvious. _"Seth!"_ she summoned the leader through the interlink in an uncharacteristically brisk tone.

"What's going on?" the latter asked upon arrival, with concerned curiosity.

"Sys wants to turn itself into a fish so it can spend a few months exploring the oceans!" Sarah blurted furiously.

"I just want to alter my shape to enhance the hydrodynamic qualities, mom exaggerates with me turning into a fish!" the fiery curled um argued, fussing in its chair.

"What's the big deal, I don't understand?" Seth asked Sarah, perplexed.

"I can't deal with either of you! I have stuff to do, I'll be in my shop!" the redhead left abruptly, her cheeks still flushed with unspoken frustration.

"What's the matter with her? Is she actually worried about you?" the leader turned to um.

"Probably. I'm going, though. Let's see, I'm going to need flippers..." um started.

"You know what? I appreciate the sharing but I'd rather not be here during this morphing phase, I think I start to understand your mother. Why don't you wait to change until after you are in the water, it would be more effective in finding the optimal shape." Seth argued.

"I'll send you a picture when I'm done, so you know what to look for, just in case you need me," um said.

And so it did. Seth used all her resolve in a good natured attempt to see anything else but um looked like a fish indeed. All smiles and happiness in its glistening wet coat, Sys had taken on the appearance of a seal-dolphin hybrid. The leader hesitated to share the interlink vision with um's fuming mother but sadly since Sarah's bracelet was on she was simultaneously regaled with the result of Sys's transformation.

"How could you let um do this!" Sarah admonished Seth.

"What did you want me to do?" the latter asked.

"What if Sys can't turn itself back?" the anguished redhead whimpered.

"Then we're going to have a slightly different um," Seth replied, unaware of the fact that she was lighting the fire under the very thing Sarah was concerned about.

_"Lighten up, cat-brains, you mean to tell me that if you could change yourself you wouldn't try?"_ sister Joseph argued through the interlink.

_"Of all the people I thought you would understand!"_ Sarah replied annoyed. _"Um is my child!"_ she continued emotionally.

_"Enjoy!"_ sister Joseph urged. Sarah turned a pitiful gaze towards the leader in search of support.

"Sys may look like us, it may love you and consider you its mother, but you have to accept that um is a completely different being, we can't expect it to abide by our way of life. Did you consider Sys might be disappointed that of all the possible shapes it could take you chose to make it look human?"

And this was the moment when the third sentient race of the planet became a reality.

_"It is actually more like a blend between human looks and purple goo, but then again so are you, so I don't get the outrage,"_ sister Joseph continued. _"Where is the sugar toy now, anyway?"_

Sarah suddenly realized that she didn't know and ran to Roberta's lab to find out.  
_"Um is already in the middle of the ocean, right on top of the continental ridge!"_ the redhead announced with excitement.

_"Big whoop!"_ sister Joseph replied, morose.

***

Sys documented her travels with fastidious accuracy, charting every bend, every deep, every gully. Since it was the first to wander into this vast new watery world um took the liberty of naming its features - the Planes of Areya, Gemma's Cradle, Floating Blossom Ridge, Solomon's Path, Lilya, The Grand Stair of Alcan, The Cliffs of Bartolomeu Dias.

Um traveled tirelessly, listening to Purple, listening to Sarah, listening to the subtle whispers of the ocean, remembering and gradually transmitting the data to Roberta's lab, making a detailed and extraordinary picture of the ocean floor appear, line by line, a modern day tapestry woven from photons and new knowledge, her gift to her human kin.

The sisters came to Roberta's lab every morning to watch with bated breath the unfolding of this discovery series, gasping at the unexpected findings, watching the previously unknown territories, the mythical places where there be dragons, turn into mountains, streams and valleys, purple cities and shimmery ridges dancing in the effervescence of underwater volcanic gases. A whole other half of their world made itself manifest, a sparkling turquoise world where density made everything look so close, the world of Purple where fast moving currents streamed past each other at great speed, almost touching and where the gentle light of the suns amplified the immortal colonies' suffused glow.

Sys swam across Alice Bay and around the Mull of Nepeta Cataria (whose name was chosen by um to please its mother) and reached a long valley flanked by rocky fringes, a processional path that ended in a bowl shaped valley that looked like a Greek amphitheater. The valley was covered in purple, the immortals really loved these shallow valleys that were too numerous to have occurred naturally and mimicked the shape and function of parabolic dishes.

_"Purple. Sculpt. City."_ the immortals told um matter of fact.

_"How?"_ Sys asked, stunned.

_"Eat. Through."_ Purple answered. _"Metropolis. 5° 5'20.58"N. 21°32'36.10"E. Central. Colony."_

***

_"Sys, when are you coming back?"_ Sarah insisted through the interlink.

_"I'm not done, mom, I'll be back in a couple of weeks."  
_

_"You need to recharge, this is too much load."_ Sarah continued, worried.

_"Oh, give it a rest, nag! Just when it got interesting! Next time put on a suit and go with the sugar toy so we can all have some peace!"_ sister Joseph blasted her through the interlink.

### Chapter Fifteen

### Of Progress

With Sys still out to sea and no pressing issues to be addressed Seth, Sarah and Roberta got together every morning to read um's symphonic quantum physics masterpiece: Seth was in charge of the translation, Sarah clarified any ambiguous emotional nuances and poor Roberta was expected to understand the theory and present it to the sisters.

The knowledge system was structured with crystalline clarity and if any of them were Purple they would probably have thought so themselves, but sadly Sarah's genetic inheritance only worked on a subconscious level and even Roberta's genius couldn't match the immortals' capacity. Seth chose to withdraw completely from the interpretation of the knowledge and let Roberta put it in a form human brains could understand first.

"It's great to spend time studying stuff you will never understand. We can store the tome in a glorified location of the library and be safe in the knowledge that we have it. As far as music is concerned, it sounds great!" sister Roberta mumbled, humbled by the fact she couldn't understand a single phrase of the theory.

"Don't let go, you've unscrambled harder things than this!" the leader encouraged her.

"No, I didn't!" Roberta answered with certainty.

"Well, we don't have anything else to do, so what's it going to hurt?" Seth tuned her argument to a different rationale.

"There is no way! I doesn't matter how many times I read it!" Roberta threw in the towel, embarrassed.

"Maybe you need the prerequisite classes," Seth asked, half jokingly.

"Maybe I do," Roberta answered. Sister deAngelis and sister Jesse had entered the lab quietly and were staring at the three and trying to figure out if they could be of assistance.

"Maybe Sys can help when she comes back," Sarah offered.

_"Yeah, like you needed another reason to call the poor thing back to your obsessive maternal smothering!"_ sister Joseph snapped through the interlink.

_"Sister, you're crossing a very fine line!"_ the redhead snapped back.

"Can you ask um to send whatever information it thinks might be useful so I don't have to wait until it comes back?" sister Roberta asked.

Sys graciously obliged, to the sister's even greater distress.

"This is even worse than the original!" poor Roberta wailed.

"We'll leave you to it," Seth concluded gently, signaling to the other sisters it was time to leave Roberta alone.

"Sarah, can you please stay? I may need to bounce some ideas off of you." Roberta asked curtly as she threw herself back into the unintelligible sea of knowledge.

***

Lily sat on the beach and studied the figurative system of human knowledge from a very large papyrus-like sheet, struggling with its fluttering in the breeze and trying to keep unruly strands of hair off her forehead and out of her eyes.

"Wow! Heavy stuff! This looks like something Sys would dig up!" Jimmy commented from behind her. He'd been watching over her shoulder for a while but Lily was so preoccupied with interpreting the structure she didn't hear him.

"Um did, in fact. Sys left this with me before it went to sea, it thought I might be interested in it, Purple finds it fascinating," Lily said.

"Purple finds walking fascinating. What are you looking at?" Jimmy asked.

"The differences between inductive and deductive reasoning," Lily answered.

"Mother Superior would be pleased! She practically lives on this stuff!" Jimmy exclaimed.

"Wait until she sees me meditate!" Lily countered.

"You really are trying to get in her good graces," Jimmy noticed.

"So what if I am? She is my mentor, I wouldn't find it detrimental if she actually liked me," Lily opened up. "Besides, I wouldn't be preaching if I were you, how many times did you get kicked out of sister Roberta's lab?"

"That's different, I was on time-out!" Jimmy protested.

"For the first six months! It's been eight years!" Lily laughed out loud.

"I like engineering!" Jimmy continued defending himself.

"And I like logic, a disciplined mind and the advancement of knowledge," Lily offered back. Jimmy decided to declare armistice and changed the subject.

"Did Sys say when it will be coming back?" he asked.

"Um keeps saying two weeks every time it talks to its mother, but I really can't imagine charting the entire ocean floor in less than a year. I think Sys is afraid its mother would have a fit if she learned the real duration of this trip."

"Do you think they'll be able to figure out how to work with entangled particles?" she continued.

"I don't know. Sister Roberta is grumpier than ever, the less she understands the madder she gets, even sister Sarah thinks twice before approaching her now. She doesn't like to have to rely on Sys," Jimmy said.

"But Sys is practically Purple and they know everything, it's not a fair contest!" Lily exclaimed.

"Sister Roberta doesn't see it that way," Jimmy whispered.

***

Sister Roberta wasn't going to admit defeat in this matter. She pored over the theoretical basis every day and whether she did or did not understand it she could surely recite it in her sleep. The cursed particles in her simulations reacted in most unusual ways, as if they belonged to a different reality whose laws were different and unknown, in unexpected and unrepeatable patterns, in a nutshell sister Roberta's worst nightmare.

_"What makes you think you can ever understand it? Purple has a few billion years on us, you can't make up for that in a few years, I don't care how smart you are!"_ sister Joseph encouraged her through the interlink.

_"Thank you, sister Joseph!"_ sister Roberta retorted.

"Just saying you're not infallible. How is it going?" sister Joseph continued unperturbed as she opened the lab door. Sister Roberta was inside the bubble and therefore out of sight.

"Let me in!" the former demanded. Roberta expanded the permissions list to include sister Joseph's brain wave profile and the sister found herself inside an unbelievable world of elementary particles with leptons and quarks flying by her ears. Sister Roberta had decided to match their flavors and colors with actual ones and the entire simulation smelled like an ice cream parlor where the delightful scents of chocolate, strawberries, raspberry, mint, vanilla and banana overpowered the more subtle ones - black cherry, rhubarb, caramel, pistachio, watermelon and peach. The confections kept changing color and flavor, migrating to the most stable states - vanilla and chocolate, whose percentages of the mix slowly increased.

"What, no jimmies?" sister Joseph asked, trying not to look impressed. A fistful of photons, gluons and Higgs particles rained from above like rainbow sprinkles in vivid neon hues. "I see you made the photons yellow," sister Joseph continued.

"Yes, they felt sunny and warm. They are lemon flavored," sister Roberta answered naturally.

"Where are the cursed entangled particles?" sister Joseph asked, curious.

"All of them are, it's just impossible to find their other selves, I can't tell what matches what. This one, for instance," sister Roberta said, poking a scrumptious pink strawberry flavored quark and straining her neck trying to find its companion.

"What are we looking for, anyway?" Joseph asked.

"That's the problem, I don't know!" Roberta answered frustrated.

"It doesn't say in that thick tome you learned by heart?" the former asked.

"I can recite it to you if you want and you can tell me," sister Roberta offered, but her visitor was too entertained by the ice cream factory to pay attention.

"Oh, look! That one moved!" sister Joseph laughed as she poked randomly at lemon yellow photons. The gentle particle motion stirred to a colorful boil.

"All of them are moving all the time, sister!" Roberta commented, dejected.

"This is fun!" sister Joseph answered, excited. "Wouldn't it be easier to start with just one pair?" she continued.

"It would be, but it wouldn't work. The experiment relies on statistics, it needs a larger context."

***

"Sister?" Jimmy asked hesitantly.

Roberta emerged from the bubble, followed by a gloriously entertained sister Joseph who looked at the two suns and realized she was awfully late with her daily tasks. She left in a hurry, sending the cargo schedule for the month through the interlink.

"What is it, Jimmy?" Roberta turned to her unofficial pupil.

"Can I see the model?" he asked.

"Sure. Take the book with you, you might need it," she answered. She watched Jimmy disappear into the bubble with the thick treatise of Purple quantum physics under his arm, then sighed profusely and turned her attention to her other mental torment: she grabbed one of the rocks off the shelf and tried to record as much as she could about it before the light of the microscope made it jump.

"Sister?" Jimmy asked through the interlink.

"What is it, Jimmy?" she answered absentmindedly.

"Did you only make doubles?" he continued.

"Yes, two particle entanglement seemed complex enough."

"What if some of the particles left?" Jimmy said.

"What do you mean?" she asked, puzzled.

"What's to keep them in the simulation, they may be anywhere by now, they might have made that rock jump," he tried to explain.

Sister Roberta looked back at the microscope to find the rock had indeed dematerialized. The irritation she experienced about this phenomenon was infinitely amplified by its uncontrollable occurrence. Blood rushed to her cheeks and she cursed under her breath, which drew the mental fire of several other sisters, shocked by the profanity. She took a deep breath to calm herself and thought about what Jimmy said.

"You mean the real particles, not the gigantic simulated particles?" she asked.

"That's the problem! The whole bubble is made of photons and electrical impulses," Jimmy questioned.

The thought gave the sister pause. She told Jimmy she would analyze his premise and give him an answer and threw herself into the now infinitely more convoluted nature of the phenomenon.

She pondered the details endlessly, turning night into day and forgetting to eat and emerged from her lab a couple of months later with an answer.

"Jimmy is right. The simulation tampers with the very nature of the experiment. We're going to need a hadron collider."

Centuries later her dream became part of the symbol of Terra Two, the iconic image ever present in educational materials, planetary governmental issues and almost every other official insignia, a shiny titanium ring surrounding their beautiful coffee colored planet - the orbital particle accelerator that spun slowly around the equator half way between the planet's atmosphere and its two natural satellites, gracefully responding to the varying pulls of the two suns, the moon and the planet itself with its strange undulating dance.

At night it sparkled like a thin silver rainbow catching the rays of the suns from behind the horizon, perfectly complemented by the planet's artificial stars.

The construction took a couple of decades, really a blink of an eye in the extended length of their existence, and shaped the memories of one generation of children, the ones who grew up watching it happen.

***

Just when Sarah resigned herself to stop asking Sys came back, a little dusty from all the sediment deposits but otherwise in perfect shape for a seal-dolphin. Upon returning um changed itself back, more or less, modifying subtle details in the process that its mother decided not to notice.

Sarah doted on it hand and foot acting like a mother hen and greatly irritating sister Joseph who couldn't stand coddling which she thought weakened the spirit.

_"The sugar toy is lucky it's not human!"_ the sister grumbled in silence. _"It wouldn't be able to tie its shoes as a result of your ever loving care!"_

The return of um stirred a whirlwind of activity, in part relating to the archiving of the new data, in part regarding upgrades and streamlining of equipment that the prolific um came up with to pass the time during its travels.

Sys took a quick trip around the fields to see what changed in its absence, followed by a very eager Sarah who filled in the details - the second rotation of the vanilla orchids that placed the plantation so close to the apothecary shop it doused it in sweet fragrance, sister Joseph's new breed of rabbits that had long silk fur, and Sarah's latest product, an ionized hygroscopic aerosol designed to release rain regularly and with great precision in specific areas. They passed through the pear orchard where the kids were playing hide and seek, picking fruit every now and then to quench their thirst. The kids tried to engage Sys in the game since it looked just like them, but um graciously declined. Sarah remembered what Seth said, that the appearance of this unique being didn't inform on its intellectual capacity. She was struggling with doubt, wondering if it wouldn't be more appropriate for Sys to choose a different guise.

_"Actually I kind of like this form!"_ Sys smiled sweetly, cute as can be with its fiery curls surrounding its tiny frame and casting shadows on its warm chocolate skin.

The tour ended abruptly with an admonition from sister Abigail that it was five past seven and Sarah was late for Vespers. The redhead left in a hurry, anticipating scolding commentary for her lack of discipline. The sisters were half way through the service by the time she arrived and nobody paid attention to her. The light was diminishing gradually in the Prayer Hall and the last rays of the suns got caught in the beveled glass edges and cast rainbows on the stone floors. The chemiluminescent glass amplified the diffuse radiance of the window panes until they reached optimal levels. There were no shadows around anything in this warm transparent glow.

The entire scene, with the sisters seated on the floor in their simple garb, surrounded by diffracted light in this sparse glass and stone room devoid of furniture, a room whose ceiling was so high its details got lost in the shadows of the tall arches, seemed so surreal to Sarah all of a sudden that she couldn't concentrate on the words of the sermon.

It was so strange, this home world of hers, with its singing skies and its paisley islands and the green moon casting ghostly shimmer on the waters. She couldn't see herself from the outside but as she sat still in the heart of the eerie building the bearer of immortal genes, mother of artificial life and rainmaker extraordinaire, Sarah with the angel hair fit right in.

***

There were many years between sister Roberta's vision and its becoming reality, months of designing and prototyping, more months of project detailing with a large team of experts, years of concerted effort from the people of Terra Two, slight setbacks and unexpected breakthroughs, arguments over how things were to be done, mostly due to sister Roberta's impatience with the much slower schedule of the others, schedule that allowed for indulgences like personal lives, logistics and social calls.

When the construction started on the hadron collider sister Roberta's schedule got packed to such a degree that she actually considered ways in which she could be in two places at once but since that didn't happen she was away for long stretches of time, leaving the other sisters with the difficult task of making up for all the daily activities of this one woman crew.

Seth went with her on occasion just for a chance to catch up on overdue visits with old friends and colleagues in Airydew, the largest metropolis on Terra Two and the seat of planetary government, and discuss the many day to day planning and coordination details they usually handled through the interlink.

In the absence of its two most active members the group activities mellowed out a little, with the addendum that sister Joseph was a stickler to their prayer schedule and ensured above all else that it didn't get neglected.

Sarah found herself with a lot of free time again and spent most of it walking out into the fields, and the more she saw them the more she remembered the love and passion of her youthful years that brought her to this enchanted place.

As she walked eagerly from one lot to another, Sarah noticed the plants transformed themselves in response to the different conditions of Terra Two, they weren't radically different from the species they had brought from Earth but the redhead's endless dedication saw the little changes - a bluish hue in the green of the foliage, due to the lightness of the soil, the stronger ridges on the stems of herbaceous plants, developed to better support their much larger size, the completely new cultivars that emerged on their own, perfectly adapted to the climate of Terra Two. Sarah couldn't get enough of this expansion of vegetal life around her and even with her days of creating transparent roses long behind her she realized that the greater miracle was what they had created here, a planet that was alive and self sustaining, growing and developing its own ways, without human intervention, the way Earth had been through the ages.

The purple bean plant had grown significantly over two hundred years into a strange local tree of life, it grew aerial roots that made it look like a small forest full of birds and small creatures of the fields who found sanctuary from the cats in its branches. Its original trunk was still standing, half green, half purple, so thick now that two peoples' outstretched arms couldn't surround it.

Sarah walked through one of the fava bean plots, passed several chamomile scented cats and returned to the kitchen with a full basket of produce, to the delight of sisters Jesse and Felix, who were on kitchen duty. Sister Jesse was cooking her favorite childhood dish, chicken in a pot. Three plump birds covered in butter and spices were waiting for the vegetables to arrive. Sister Jesse uttered a sigh of relief at the sight of Sarah and her basket and quickly got to chopping and dicing.

"How long are they going to be gone?" sister Felix asked. "It's getting pretty understaffed around here, by the time we're done with the double duty kitchen shifts I'll be an accomplished chef."

"Too bad that no amount of kitchen experience can prevent sister Abigail from burning our food," sister Jesse chuckled softly.

_"Watch it, Parmentier! If you don't like my cooking you can all feel free to do triple kitchen shifts!"_ sister Abigail complained from afar.

_"Scorched runny oatmeal, what's not to like?"_ Jesse couldn't help herself. Sister Abigail sulked, but said nothing.

"Roberta said they ran into some delays, procurement for one of the alloys in the external hull took longer than anticipated, so she had to stay longer, but Seth will be back for dinner," sister Felix continued.

***

"How are things in Airydew?" sister Benedict asked. Seth nodded her head to signal that things were going well, as expected. Sister Benedict had an inquisitive nature and her bright blue eyes sparkled with curiosity. Sometimes she wished she could reach inside the leader's head and drag out those words she so seldom spoke.

"Like for instance?" the sister insisted, slightly annoyed.

"They finished the transoceanic bridge, it's a sight to behold," Seth indulged her. The islands of Terra Two weren't very large so the greater cities had become by necessity an extraordinary openwork of connecting bridges, intricate in their layered weaving of merges and overpasses, more beautiful in their utilitarian ever evolving ways than any pre-defined design would have allowed. The transoceanic bridge was a very ambitious project, connecting seven islands to a total length of two thousand and fifty four miles, spanning vast stretches of open water over fast running currents and twining between several gigantic purple bowls.

"Really? How so?" sister Benedict delved into Seth's mind for details and sat back in her chair with enchantment at the sight of the shimmery ribbon that linked the islands like colorful beads on a silver chain. "What else?" the sister pressed, disappointed by the taciturn leader's lack of cooperation.

"It was hot and noisy. Every public area is drowned in a combination of human talk and purple music, it gets very distracting if you speak both fluently," Seth continued in a weary tone.

"Aah, so they did take to your new language?" sister Benedict pressed on, very excited about the news and completely indifferent to the exhaustion in the leader's tone.

"Take to it? Half the population speaks nothing but! They are all running around with their portable brain enabled harmony generators, completely out of sync with each other. I walked for an hour from one end of the sea terminal to the other and it felt like attending fifteen consecutive instrument tuning sessions at the philharmonic. Thank goodness for peace and quiet!" she sighed with relief as a vibrant clatter of broken glass and metallic screeches rose to a deafening amplitude.

"Oh, don't mind that!" sister Benedict chirped cheerfully. "They're recycling a couple of buildings into a new genetics and bioengineering institute, it's going to be a few days."

### Chapter Sixteen

### Of Lavish Indulgence

And so it was. Between the new construction and the hoards of visitors that descended upon their community like it were the new promised land the sisters' life became quite hectic. Public interest about their endless reserves of ingenuity never dulled and their group indulged it with little bits of wonderful that always bordered on madness.

The fact that sister Roberta's current research was focused on influencing subatomic particles from beyond the edges of the known universe would have earned her a straight jacket in any reasonable society but not on Terra Two. Terra Two was built on crazy, crazy was its normal and its point of pride and people came from far and wide to watch it unfold.

Phrases like _'I told you not to look, now I have to restart the experiment!'_ , _'The bio-molecular scanner is not a toy!'_ , _'Can you turn this into 3-hydroxypentanoic acid?'_ or _'Stand here and shade this rock, I don't want it to jump!'_ were normal parts of the conversation for grown-ups and children alike.

The spatial printing of the genetics and bioengineering institute provided unexpected entertainment for the guests; large groups of people watched it materialize from the ground up - first the foundations, then the structure, then the systems, then the finishes. When the last piece of metal plate was finally placed and the last argument over the exact color of the anodized finish and precise composition of the alloy subsided the architects, engineers and construction team congratulated each other, did a quick walk-through and went home, planning for a more detailed check up later.

Sarah, for whom the edifice was built, hesitated in front of the open door until Seth pushed her in.

"Welcome, Sarah!" the building greeted her in a soothing voice. "So nice to finally meet you! Your suite is on the first floor, would you like me to guide you?" the soft voice continued.

"My suite?" Sarah repeated, doubtful.

"Yes, your lounge, your private greenhouse, your garden, your research lab and your VR room," the building clarified.

"Where are the classrooms, what if some of the children want to talk to me?" Sarah started panicking.

"The lounge is spacious," the building reassured her and Sarah got the distinct feeling that the word 'spacious' was a considerable understatement. "The classrooms are in the south wing, right behind the concert hall."

A bewildered Sarah stared at Seth in search of an explanation.

"We will have conferences, you wouldn't want the sophisticated people in Airydew to think us backwards, would you?" the leader elaborated.

"My 'suite' seems oversized, just off the top of my head," Sarah protested. "What am I going to do with all that space?"

"You'll get used to it," Seth replied curtly, then turned to the building interface. "Guide us, please?"

A series of simple metallic wall sconces glowed dimly to show the way.

"Why does it have wings and what's in all these rooms?" Sarah continued to protest.

"Permanent suites, guest suites, classrooms, laboratories, libraries, archives and reading areas, auditoria, music studios, storage and utilities, greenhouse units," the building enumerated.

"Why the greenhouse? We live in an equatorial climate," Sarah asked.

"Precisely. In your new controlled environments you can modify the temperature and humidity levels, as well as the day/night cycles. We have several climates already implemented," the building interface impassibly went on, "meeting rooms, common VR space, biological material processing and store rooms, crop monitoring headquarters, a small cafe..."

"We only have to walk a few hundred feet home, I think the eatery is overkill," Sarah protested.

"There are going to be guests," the building answered.

"The Prayer Hall is across the street, we have a full kitchen there," the redhead continued.

"Oh, would you just stop whining? You're annoying me!" sister Joseph ran out of patience. "Where do you keep the cacti? I want to see. Maybe I can acclimate a few lizards, you know, for the kids?" she continued with surprising excitement.

"The desert environment is also in the south wing, on the third floor," the building answered solicitously. "This way, please," it led the way by lighting another sequence of sconces in a different color.

"So, what's going to happen to my office in the Prayer Hall?" Sarah asked apprehensively.

"You're a sister of our order, I expect you're going to spend a good portion of your time with us," the leader stared her down.

***

This objective became harder and harder to accomplish as the sisters' schedule quickly filled up.

_"I promise I will never complain I don't have enough things to do, ever again,"_ sister Roberta mumbled morosely from somewhere on her travelling path, she didn't know herself where she was half the time with all the meetings in Airydew, the visits to the part manufacturing studios and the ever more rarefied returns to her beloved lab.

_"Be careful what you wish for, that's what I always say!"_ sister Joseph commented in a thoughtful voice.

_"How am I going to teach the kids with all the public relations tasks taking up all my time?"_ Sarah interjected, secretly upset that she didn't have time to go to the apothecary ever since growing groups of people filled the institute on official business or out of curiosity.

_"Want to take care of the cows instead?"_ sister Joseph offered.

_"I wouldn't mind,"_ Sarah replied. _"I love cows."_

_"That's why you're not going anywhere near them! Goodness, you ask a person a simple question and all of a sudden they think they're animal husbandry specialists!"_ sister Joseph protested, offended.

_"I don't know why they assigned this role to me, I'm terrible at socializing,"_ Sarah continued complaining.

_"You never express your opinions and can't say 'no' to a cat. Comes in handy in when engaged in delicate interactions,"_ sister Joseph didn't skip a beat. _"Why don't you assign some responsibilities to those discipline lacking pupils of yours? That is if they can understand what 'responsibility' means. Lord knows they're old enough!"_

***

Despite her busy schedule Sarah secretly enjoyed one lavish indulgence: her private aromatic garden. The garden was laid out on a smooth platform overlooking the ocean, the east edge of which ended with a pair of winding stone stairs that embraced a small fountain like parentheses. The stairs ended half buried in the sand of the beach and from them a path meandered between palm trees and ferns to the edge of the water. On the west side of the garden a flagstone path flanked by white gardenias led through a narrow gate in the stone garden wall to the cloister of the Prayer Hall.

Between these two edges lay the delightful garden where Sarah snuck out to think, putter around, breathe in the humid air of Terra Two and watch the kids play on the beach.

Solomon followed her like a shadow in all her pursuits and since Sarah found reasons to come back to the garden the cat became a constant feature in it too, pretending to rest under its benches with eyes half closed, ready to pounce at anything that moved or rustled.

The contrast between the luscious green of the tropical plants and the burnt sienna of the planet's soil made everything look so healthy and vibrant that Sarah often wondered if the genetic modifications alone enabled their extensive lifespan or the planet itself had something to do with it.

The design of the garden was a simple four square with a glazed ceramic birdbath at the center and immaculate white bougainvillea spilling over the top of the wall. Pear trees and jasmine guarded the remaining edge and shaded a couple of stone benches bleached by the heat of the suns and the salt of the ocean. The pear trees served as tutors for the thick vanilla orchids whose fragrance dripped from above, rich and heavy in the humid air.

The planting beds were covered by a thick matting of aloe vera, neatly manicured due to the regular harvesting of its leaves. When in bloom its flowers echoed the reddish soil and their pendulous, translucent buds could almost be mistaken for one of the ubiquitous pieces of ceramic art that embellished the grounds of every home on their island.

When it rained Sarah sat on the large lanai that opened the lounge to the garden. She sat on a carved teak bench, so finely polished that one could almost see one's reflection, really close to the ground, between an openwork wood coffer filled with curing vanilla beans and a large basket of dried hot peppers. Sometimes she brought the marble mortar and pestle Sys had made for her to grind turmeric or cloves by hand as she let her mind be refreshed by the song of the rain and the jingle of the glass chimes.

Children showed up often and unexpectedly from the beach, from the kitchen garden, or from the classrooms and labs. Sarah's doors were never closed during the day, she just threw them wide open every morning after Matins and allowed her suite to become the hub of local activities.

Sister Joseph used the garden path and the suite as a shortcut from the Prayer Hall to the greenhouses; she had requested a variety of cold and dry climate wildlife and populated the institute's deserts, taigas and tundras. She often sought refuge in the evergreen forest from annoying tourists and pesky little buggers with ever evolving VR games.

Generation after generation of children had walked the hallways and rambled through the glazed rooms of the Prayer Hall for many decades and now, when all the action moved to the institute and the religious edifice regained the peace and decorum it was supposed to inspire the sister found it empty and quiet and looked for any excuse to spend her time in the company of the kids, the other sisters, and her beloved animals.

She still admonished the children on occasion, of course, for the chaos and rumpus they imposed on the long suffering sisters.

Sarah went back inside her lounge and looked at the low table surrounded by soft couches and chairs trying to find a couple of square feet for her research materials but between Lily's tomes of philosophy and logic, Jimmy's latest experiment, two herb drying racks and Gemma's scaled down replica of a space shuttle there wasn't any space left. She sighed and pushed aside a pottery project in progress so she could curl up in one of the chairs. It was the end of the quarter and all the kids were fretting over finals so she had decided to allow them to put off tidying until school was out.

"I thought you said you didn't need so much room. Isn't this lounge spacious?" Seth joked, grinning from ear to ear.

"I wasn't told what the room occupancy was!" Sarah protested wretchedly.

"Maybe we can build you an addition," Seth continued. "Or you can follow sister Joseph's example and spend some time with the silver foxes in the tundra," she offered.

"And to think I have my very own VR room," Sarah sighed again.

"Yeah, why don't you use it?" Seth asked.

"Jenna needs it for a school project," Sarah replied.

_"Dr. Reyek and dr. Koslovski are here,"_ sister deAngelis announced through the interlink. The science delegation from Earth's orbital greenhouse was there one day early and Sarah ran over the details in her mind to make sure the institute was ready for their arrival.

"Duty calls!" she put down her unopened research materials and walked out into the hallway winding her way through a swarm of students that spilled out of the classrooms, the labs, the greenhouses and the auditoria. The building spoke soothingly over the hubbub like a friendly resident ghost, announcing the next events, adjusting the light and ventilation levels and picking up after its rambunctious users.

Chapter Seventeen

### Of Caramel Covered Blue Pears

_"She's so beautiful!"_ Sys thought, watching her mother fluff up the dirt around the roots of an aloe vera plant. A wavy strand of luminous hair that cast two shadows on Sarah's forehead kept sweeping the ground and mirrored her every move. The redhead was so absorbed in the nurturing of the tiny succulent that she didn't hear um approach stepping lighter than a cat on the warm flagstones.

_"She is, isn't she?"_ sister Joseph commented. _"For all the good it does us!"_

_"I heard that! Were you talking about me or the plant?"_ Sarah looked up smiling and as she rose from the ground the golden tendrils of her hair seemed to be made of pure light. At the age of three hundred and sixteen her skin had maintained its alabaster transparency, which was strange on Terra Two for a person who had dedicated her entire existence to working the fields and spent most of her time outdoors under the warmth of two suns. The purple inhabitants inside Sarah's cells didn't spare any effort and didn't miss any anomaly, her skin was flawless and radiant, with no visible pores, lines, wrinkles, or dark spots, with a rosy blush on the apples of her cheeks, a perfect complement to her almond shaped green eyes shaded by lush eyelashes. Golden specks floated in the transparent green of her irises making them look liquid and restless like the ocean she spent so much time gazing upon. Stranger still for a fair green eyed redhead, Sarah's skin had no freckles and the long nights she spent bent over the micron microscope didn't paint dark circles under her eyes.

_"They must really love you!"_ Sys commented.

_"I know they do,"_ the redhead's smile broadened. _"Sarah. Sister. Remember?"_

_"When you two are done checking each other's make-up can cat-brains go back to doing some actual work around here? The weekly crop report isn't going to write itself! Whoa, crazy!"_ the sister exclaimed, puzzling the two. _"Chicken assault, the hens are very protective of their young,"_ she continued. _"So when are you going to send me the report?"_

"It's done, sister. I'll send it to you right now."

Sarah went back to her lounge to find Jenna nervously printing a model of her latest chemistry project, a complicated synthetic ribonucleic acid she'd been working on for the last two months. The strand had to be real size and printing it under the microscope was taking all of Jenna's focus and hand-eye coordination. Sarah was waiting for her to finish.

"Don't you have microscopes in the lab?" she asked.

"They are all taken, everybody is working on their finals!" Jenna answered not lifting her gaze from the complex molecular construction.

Sarah sighed and made her way back out into the garden, with Sys in tow. They walked through the gate towards the Prayer Hall and took a narrow dirt path out into the field, trying not to get their feet tangled in the wild greenery, walking between patches of soybeans and vegetable rows, passing by the Tree of Life and the pear orchard. The apothecary shed looked small and ancient compared to the new edifices but everything inside it was perfectly cleaned and maintained, no spec of dust, no water spot on the glassware, all mainstay substances well stocked.

"How long has it been since you last came here?" Sys asked.

"I come here every day," Sarah answered to um's surprise. "Can you place this on an up link please?" she handed her a copy of the report and Sys obliged. "This is the last place I can actually use, nobody else comes here anymore." A rattle of moving glass begged to differ as Jimmy emerged from behind the counter with a Wheatstone bridge in one hand and a deflection magnetometer in the other.

"Hi, sister! Sys! I need this..." the boy started.

"For a school project, I know!" Sarah finished his phrase, resigned. She turned around to tend to one of the cell cultures in progress and found herself face to face with Seth who, as usual, had shown up behind her unnoticed.

"Goodness, did anybody forget to mention the quorum meeting to me?" the redness startled, uneasy.

"Am I ever going to get that report?!" sister Joseph answered her question in a sour mood as she opened the door.

"I already sent it," Sarah protested but the sister who had just received it dismissed the commentary with one hand to focus on the details of the analysis.

"Where is Jimmy?" sister Roberta came in through the back door, furious that the youngster forgot the subatomic particle tuner running when he left the lab. She was just back from one of the endless project coordination trips and had all her concerns validated by finding her beloved lab in disarray.

_"The deadline is four o'clock, Jimmy!"_ sister Novis interjected. _"It's almost two."_

_"Yes, sister,"_ the latter acknowledged and squeezed out the back door, too rushed to listen to the outraged litany sister Roberta had prepared for him.

"Why is everybody here?" Sarah asked. A couple of cats moved swiftly across the rafters in response to her question, leaving a waft of lavender and chamomile behind them and enticing Gemma to come out quietly from the VR bubble where she'd been hiding to practice with her flight simulator.

"Really, Gemma? You couldn't find another place to make sudden movements than a laboratory full of glassware?" Sarah chided. Gemma didn't answer, she picked up one of the cats and skipped out the door to join a passing group of kids.

"And this is our sister Sarah's famous biochemistry lab, where most of the research you're interested in started," a tour guide led a sizable group of visitors into the small room that started creaking at the seams.

***

"Is the project going well, sister?" Sarah asked Roberta.

"It's on schedule, I'd like it to go faster," the latter replied. "Can you read this for me, please?" she pushed the wave generator with the Purple tome of quantum physics towards the redhead.

"Really, sister, I'm not all that great at reading Purple, besides even if I did I wouldn't understand the theory," Sarah protested.

"Try, though. As Mother Superior said, what's it going to hurt?" Roberta insisted.

Sarah turned on the machine and a beautiful harmony of celestial music crashed inside her mind like waves on a beach. She listened dutifully till the end, understanding about half of the translation and none of the science.

"Really, sister, I can't possibly..." she said apologetically.

"How did the music make you feel?" the sister asked anxiously and Sarah looked at her to make sure she didn't lose her mind.

"I beg your pardon?" she replied.

"It's connected to your emotions, not your reason, so how did the music make you feel?" the sister insisted.

"Overwhelmed," Sarah tried.

"That's not good. What else?" sister Roberta noted on her pad like a psychiatrist during a talk therapy session.

"I don't know, blue?" Sarah answered tentatively.

"Ok, what else?" sister Roberta continued.

"No, sister. I mean the color blue. The music made me feel the color blue and it tasted like caramel," Sarah chuckled.

"Now you're talking! Anything else on these lines?" sister Roberta asked again.

"Pears. Caramel covered blue pears."

"Of course!" sister Roberta blurted and jumped to her microscope, forgetting about Sarah altogether and feverishly inputting modeling equations into the machine.

"What's with the blue pears, sister?" Sarah asked timidly.

"We need to start with the strange quarks," sister Roberta mumbled unfazed.

Sister Joseph had forgotten to share with the others her visit to the ice cream wonderland where every subatomic particle had real color and flavor and in the absence of pertinent information the entire conversation seemed so patently absurd to Sarah that she didn't think there was any reason to continue it, shrugged her shoulders and headed towards the door. Sister Roberta raised her head from the microscope, smiling.

"Thank you, dear! You're a godsend!" she said with gratitude.

"If you say so, sister. I'm glad I could help," Sarah answered befuddled.

***

The sisters were so busy with all the tourists and the science delegations that they didn't notice sister Roberta's absence. Some assumed she was on another trip to Airydew, others that she was involved in any number of the simultaneous activities she usually juggled with superhuman ease. It wasn't until Sarah ran a quick errand to her lab to borrow a piece of equipment that everybody found out the sister had been spending every waking moment there, surrounded by particle dynamics simulations running at various scales and speeds and completely immersed in the accursed quantum physics manual that defied her understanding.

The less she understood the more she insisted, since scientific curiosity and acerb tenacity were core components of her personality, and as Sarah entered the door she had just started reading the tome from the beginning, beet red with frustration and with a wild gleam in her eyes.

"What do you want, sister?" she asked, her voice grittier than sandpaper.

"The spectrometer. I didn't mean to bother you," Sarah apologized.

"It's on the top shelf in the back," Roberta fumed, angry at the location of the spectrometer, Sarah and her need for said piece of equipment.

Sarah took the device quietly and snuck out the back door without noise, like a ghost. She had known Roberta long enough to realize leaving her to her research was the only acceptable finale for this scene.

Roberta started again, focused obsessively on the music. The tome melodiously narrated seven very logical paragraphs and reached a conclusion that didn't derive from them in any way, like a sunset ending at high noon. If Sarah were there she could have used the caramel covered blue pears example as an object lesson about the importance of inferred knowledge to the understanding of things, but Sarah wasn't there, apprehensive no doubt of the annoyed physicist's wrath.

_"I'm sure they are doing this to me on purpose!"_ sister Roberta's mind fumed silently. Sarah would have loved to jump to Purple's defense, but she remembered the whole _'water.blue'_ incident and remained philosophically quiet.

_"There is no logic whatsoever in this text! 'Dancing on mirrors in the past', what in the world do they mean! If I told you that gluons are dancing on mirrors in the past you'd lock me up!"_ sister Roberta's mind exploded.

_"We should have locked you up a long time ago, I'm sure it's too late now!"_ sister Joseph mumbled. _"Kinda' makes sense to me, though!"_

_"What, sister? What of this makes any sense to you?"_ Roberta retorted.

_"Sounds like your theory works in time too, not only in space,"_ sister Joseph continued.

_"Can I see the particle simulation? I heard it's quite something,"_ Seth entered the conversation.

_"NOW?"_ sister Roberta asked, a little more assertively than she should have.

"Yes, now!" Seth replied tersely from the doorway. Roberta begrudgingly compiled the program and let it run.

"And it's not 'dancing on mirrors in the past', it's 'reverberating in mirrors of the past'", the leader clarified as she entered the bubble.

"Are you sure?" Roberta followed her in with a blank stare.

"Sister, I wrote the language," the leader protested.

The scrumptious world of quarks and leptons was in constant motion with particles being carried by their charges like bubbles on the surface of a brook, colorful and deliciously fragrant. There was something about this subatomic world that could make anybody giddy and Seth giggled as a lepton brushed against her hair, briefly hanging on to the static around it.

"Which ones are the gluons?" she asked.

_"They're the strawberry flavored sprinkles,"_ sister Joseph clarified from the tomato patch.

"Why is this reacting to my electrical charge? I thought this was supposed to be a simulation of a field, not a real one?" Seth asked, brushing a dusting of colorful gluons and bright yellow photons off her shoulders.

"You and me both," Roberta replied. "You know, Jimmy was the first to figure this out: simulation or no, at quantum scale interactions will occur."

"What is 'reverberating in mirrors of the past'?" the leader asked.

"That's Purple for 'we want to drive you insane'!" sister Roberta's frustration returned and her face turned a deep shade of fuchsia.

Chapter Eighteen

### Of the Heart of Scorpius

"Gluon. Time. Reflection. Different. Gluon."

"I'm sorry, I don't understand!" Sarah replied apologetically.

"You. Yesterday. Not. You. Now." Purple insisted, annoyed.

"Of course it's the same me!" Sarah protested. "You don't get the concept of time?"

"You. No. Time. Concept." Purple replied, offended.

"Whatever you say," Sarah tried to pacify it.

"How. Same. You." they asked.

"I'm the same person, just one day older," Sarah elaborated.

"Gluon. Same. Older." Purple responded.

"But you can't see yesterday me!" Sarah exclaimed.

"Long. Time. No. See." Purple joked. "See. All. One. Minute. Sarah."

"Not at the same time!"

"Define. Same. Time." Purple asked.

"What does that have to do with entangled particles?" asked Sarah.

"They gave me the same speech yesterday. If you understand it your're better than I!" sister Roberta interjected, frustrated.

She was fumbling with the lasers, trying to adjust the wavelengths and creating beautiful ad-hoc light shows when the beams bounced between the mirrors. Every now and then the photons ran interference and thousands of little sparkles glimmered like so many constellations. Waves kept bouncing off the walls of their reflective container at light speed, too fast to figure out which was first, which was real, for unlike the mirror image of a grain of sand, every reflection of light is light.

Sister Roberta finally tuned the lasers to the precise wavelength and configuration she was searching for and an image of the deep space station Antares Corde appeared.

"Is this in real time?" Sarah asked, excited.

"Not exactly, about three months off. They bundled the visuals in the subspace transmission, but that's the fastest we could get it, considering the distance," sister Roberta clarified. "Oh, I will be so thrilled when I finally get the wicked bouncing on the mirrors puzzle, so we can get instantaneous access to this area!" she groaned sorrowfully.

"It's probably finished by now," Sarah offered.

"I don't think so, they seem to be four to six months from the Grand Opening. Look at the center of the seven o'clock strand, it's still exposed to space." Sister Roberta rotated and zoomed the image to focus on the unfinished area. Antares Corde looked like a miniature spiral galaxy, its curving strands spinning slowly in the middle of a circle of artificial satellites, twelve of them to be precise, like a colossal space clock. The strand pointing to seven, at least from their current point of view, was swarming with a fervent mechanical activity that reminded Sarah of a giant anthill. Far away in the distance the real heart of Scorpius glowed large and bright orange on the background of deep space in all its supergiant glory, dwarfing the tiny stars around it.

"I used to watch this constellation every night when I was at the institute in Christchurch," Sarah remembered images from two centuries ago.

"I grew up gazing at the Southern Cross, I dreamed for hours about the worlds that lay beyond the deep expanse."

"You're from the southern hemisphere?" Sarah asked surprised.

"Argentina, born and raised. Puerto Deseado," sister Roberta answered.

"You never told me that!" Sarah objected.

"You never asked," Roberta answered simply. "I never thought I'd see Antares up-close, though. Looks like we're not the farthest humans from Earth anymore."

"How is Soleá?" Sarah asked.

"Basking in the sunshine," sister Roberta answered. The new M-class planet was larger, colder, rockier, and as its name implied, brighter than Terra Two, dazzling in the magnesium light of its sun. It already had an oxygen rich atmosphere, much thicker than Earth's, due to the massive size of the planet. Its rocky soil was fertile enough, although compared to the unbelievable fecundity of Terra Two it seemed almost barren. One feature of Soleá made it unforgettable: its heavenly blue sky, a sky so deep its color echoed in the peaceful oceans, in the rocky cliffs, in the scales of the dragons. Unlike Terra Two, it had been clear from the beginning that Soleá was bustling with life, most of it reptilian-like, kind of cute, actually, if you didn't mind five headed creatures. The indigenous vegetation was twisted and bristly, true to the arid environment, with grayish-blue grass and Oma plants, so fluffy and colorful they could be mistaken for Truffula trees.

"It looks like our counterparts got all the perks: breathable air, drinkable water, edible plants, no osmosis pumps..." Sarah enumerated.

"Aah, but do they have Purple siblings?" sister Roberta asked rhetorically.

"I heard Lily wants to go," Sarah hesitated, still feeling the guilt of having abandoned her birth planet for the siren song of Terra Two. "The children will be graduating in a few months, I guess they aren't children anymore." Nostalgia and unease cast shadows on her spirit because even if Sarah's body never aged, her soul did. Another generation of children came and went, taking a little of her heart with them when they left to chart their own path on other islands, on the other side of the planet, the constellation, the galaxy.

"Don't you miss it sometimes?" sister Roberta asked, with unspoken longing, staring at the hologram of deep space dotted by stars.

"What, space travel? Goodness, no! I almost lost my mind with boredom on the way here. Same stars over and over, crammed quarters and nothing to do for months on end!" Sarah protested.

"Oh, come on, admit it, it's tempting!" sister Roberta insisted.

"I'd like to see Soleá, maybe consult with the exobiology team for a couple of years, how long would the trip be?" she asked, expectantly.

"With our current technology, approximately thirteen years," sister Roberta deflated her enthusiasm.

"Thirteen!" Sarah exclaimed.

"It's clear on the other side of the galaxy. You can stop visit Earth on the way there, if you want," sister Roberta continued unperturbed.

"Just because I have no expiration date it doesn't mean I want to spend my life staring at space!" Sarah protested. "Good grief, let's look at that theory again! It can't take thirteen years to decode it!"

***

There was something in Sarah's personality that once hooked to an idea would follow it to the proverbial ends of the Earth. In her case it was more like the ends of the universe, provided they were lucky enough to untangle the tangled particles mystery.

Ever since she learned about the dragons the redhead had not have a moment's peace, because how could there be a place with dragons that Sarah didn't explore? Nevertheless, she wasn't willing to waste twenty six years of her seemingly endless life on this adventure because she didn't believe the gift of immortality was a license to spend one's years in wasteful pursuits.

Seth watched this soul struggle with amusement, curious which part of the redhead's personality would win: daring Sarah with the bacterial cultures who made the split second decision to leave Earth for a planet twenty light years away or Sarah with the angel hair who loved cats and crinum lilies and dedicated her life to scientific research and educating children. Seth couldn't resist the temptation to tip the scales in her favor.

"Just in case you're considering a prolonged absence remember that your being here is not something we can replace. Who is going to run the institute?" she asked in a tone that concealed her upset.

"Good thing I'm not going to die, then," Sarah joked. "It feels good to be needed, thank you. I wouldn't dream of spending twenty six years in space, are you kidding me? If sister Roberta figures out a way to make us magically materialize there in a blink of an eye I would certainly like to see the dragons, they're adorable!"

"They're cold blooded five headed lizards," Seth protested, trying not to smile.

"They weigh fifteen pounds and their scales are blue, I think that qualifies as cute," Sarah continued, grinning from ear to ear. It became clear that the dragons made the redhead pursue her Gulliver's travels dream again. Not the Truffula trees, not the deep blue skies, not the fiery heart of Scorpius. For there be dragons on Soleá, and where there be dragons Sarah had to venture.

"Tell me if she does. I'll come with you," Seth replied naturally.

"Can you help us with the language? Details we're missing, nuances that escape us, mistranslations, anything?" Sarah pleaded.

"I'll change my schedule," Seth agreed.

_"So, you all figured that the only person on this planet who would not be needed on an exobiology research trip is the zootechnical engineer!"_ sister Joseph expressed her wish to join the slowly coagulating science team in her usual manner.

_"Sister, I wouldn't dream of leaving you behind when we're chasing dragons! By all means, come along!"_ sister Roberta retorted, still resentful over the spectrometer incident and slightly disappointed that the dragons in question were only two foot tall.

***

Of course reality always trails behind vision and Roberta's patience was tried for months while the construction on the collider concluded, almost at the same time as the seventh strand of the deep space station.

Progress on harnessing the magic of quarks was slow and despite Seth's masterful delving in the Purple ocean of metaphors they were no closer to a working theory than before.

Sister Roberta was hoping that working out the experiment in a real environment would straighten out some of the limitations inherent to the virtual reality simulation, but didn't have specific expectations in mind, a fact that irritated Seth, as always when someone proceeded without a plan.

Seth's strategic brilliance had served her well all her life and she wouldn't dream of pursuing any venue without at least three, preferably more, viable alternatives. She thought that people who flew by the seat of their pants simply lacked the intellectual discipline to develop a plan and didn't trust their solutions to work.

"Sister, you have to show me some progress each week, I feel like we're dragging our feet," she pressured poor Roberta, who needed the added pressure like water in her shoes.

"If God graces me with an instant revelation of the entanglement theory you'll be the first to know. In the meantime we can all read the tome together weekly if you'd like. It's very musical!" she griped.

"Surely there's got to be some way to anticipate what you expect to see as a result of this experiment, especially since it took so much time and effort to build the collider!" Seth insisted.

"I'm sure the scientific community will put it to good use. I'm not the only flower in the garden," sister Roberta pared down the leader's expectations.

The big day finally arrived, fascicles of particles were sped through the tunnel and circled Terra Two at twice the speed of light, smashing into each other, dematerializing and rematerializing like Roberta's jumping rocks.

"You could have studied the stones and skipped the generational project altogether," sister Joseph poured salt on the wound.

Sister Roberta didn't answer, focusing on the movement of particles around the planet and waiting for something, tense.

"That one!" she exclaimed. "It wasn't there before, I'm sure it jumped!"

"Jumped from where? And how could you possibly tell, all photons look the same to me!" sister Novis said, puzzled.

"From its previous location," Roberta said, elated, and decided to elaborate when she saw the flabbergasted look in sister Novis's eye. "Imagine a very tightly bound spring where a dot jumps up one spire without following the curve."

"What does that mean?" the sister still waited for a translation.

"It means this photon traveled 25,000 miles instantaneously. More correctly, it was brought from one second ago and materialized inside the vacuum in the here and now," Roberta continued.

"What does that mean?" the sister repeated.

"I don't know yet," sister Roberta's ecstasy receded, "but it is fundamentally significant."

"Does it work in a straight line?" Seth asked, with renewed hope.

"I don't know," Roberta answered.

"Is there any way to find out?" the leader continued.

"I don't know. Give me a week," Roberta got lost in one of her adventures of the mind and Seth realized it wouldn't make any sense to disturb her until she had a chance to mull things over.

Chapter Nineteen

### Of the Past

A week later sister Roberta came forth, obviously tired but holding on to a shiny container with wonder and pride. She waited for the other sisters to be seated on the stone floor of the Prayer Hall and turned the device on.

The image projected on their visual cortex was deceivingly crude in its simplicity, an endless luminous coil stretched between them with its ends lost into the distance. The spires of the coil seemed to attract each other like magnets and then suddenly change polarity and hurl forward at great speed. The process repeated for the next pair, and then the one after that, transmitting a hypnotic wave pattern through the spring. The harmonics of the movement were so precise and so complex at the same time that the sisters took a moment to admire the dance before asking how it was relevant to their research subject.

"I'm afraid you'll have to explain this to us, sister. It really is beautiful but I don't understand how it works, " Seth broke the silence in a soothing voice. As they sat on nothing in the midst of deep space staring at the luminous spring spanning infinitely her voice made the sisters hearts stir. They felt as if they were awakened from a dream to hear the angels speak. Sister Roberta composed herself and then started.

"The principle is simple, really. Each spire catches the previous spire's version of a particle, speeds it up and passes it on to the following loop," she started.

"And how does that advance our purpose?" Seth asked, curious.

"Do you remember the particle movement that started the wave through the coil when I turned the VR compiler on?" Roberta asked. "At every given moment it belongs to that same time. If that particle were us, we'd all be still watching the beginning of this experiment."

"Clarify, please?" Seth asked, confused.

"We are translating a still frame across space without modifying the time it belongs to," sister Roberta explained to the audience who stood still in the middle of space with a blank stare on their faces.

"What kind of things can you transport this way, sister?" Sarah asked.

"Not things, time slices," the sister clarified.

"You lost us, dear," sister Mary-Francis commented gently, as the others nodded their heads in agreement.

"It's like borrowing yourself from the recent past until you get to your destination. Remember? See. All. One. Minute. Sarah."

"I'll have to see this to believe it!" sister Joseph exclaimed in the words of the doubting Thomas.

"It is very hard to explain when you're inside the experiment, but you already have, though from your frame of reference there is nothing to see, since nothing changes. If this were the actual event, and not a simulation of it, this entire conversation would never have happened and we'd all be in the fields going about our daily tasks. At this point, depending on the speed, we could be two hours, one day or even a month behind real time."

"Get out of here!" sister Joseph couldn't believe her ears. "How much of our world can you translate in this way?"

"There is no theoretical limit, really," Roberta elaborated, so accustomed to the idea of translating reality through time that she didn't notice the horrified look in sister Joseph's eyes.

"Mercy, sister! When cat-brains made a sentient creature, I said nothing," the latter clamored, ignoring the disapproving shuffle in a crowd who had experienced that moment and 'nothing' was not an accurate description of sister Joseph's reaction, "but this time you are playing God. What's next, you want to scrap this universe and make yourself a new one?!" she continued, outraged. Sister Roberta was displeased with the outburst but not surprised and replied calmly.

"Actually one of the applications I envisioned for this device was to go past the limits of the visible universe, don't you want to know what's beyond the farthest object we can see? Lily wants to know!"

"Of course she does! You crazies have filled her brains with this nonsense! How long would that endeavor take?!" the sister protested, making clear to Roberta that she didn't understand the concept. For a moment Roberta wanted to point out to sister Joseph that she was sitting in the middle of a deep space that wasn't there and the time it would take to get to the edge of the Universe or anywhere else for that matter was always zero, at least as far as their reference system was concerned. She chose to abandon the fight.

"So, what's the conclusion of your research, sister?" Seth asked, and her voice got picked up in a feed-back loop, reverberating among the stars.

"We'd be like a candle between mirrors, dear. At the speed of light you can see all of the reflections of its flame at the same time. Only we'd be traveling so much faster than light that that we will see the last reflection before the candle is even lit," sister Roberta daydreamed. "The most important detail will be to keep the clocks synchronized. We won't want to live in a time paradox nightmare."

***

The sisters exited the glass building and Sarah turned left to take the narrow dirt path overgrown with bromeliads and Bird of Paradise flowers towards the beach. She walked through the soft sand for a while, lost in thought, until she reached the stairs leading to the Institute. She sat at the bottom of the steps in the shade of the pear trees and for a while she thought of nothing. The breeze caressed her cheeks, sifting a dusting of blossoms from the pear trees and bringing the delicious fragrance of vanilla closer.

Sarah smiled trying to imagine the trip to Soléa, the scaly skins of the dragons baked in the intense sunlight touching her palm, the still, mirror-like surface of its oceans. She wondered if they could bring back a dragon, then she remembered Solomon was quite territorial and might not like the cute little lizards. As she listened to Sarah's worry about what the five headed creature was going to eat on Terra Two, sister Joseph couldn't help herself and retorted.

"Thank Heavens, sister, that the world doesn't move according to that jumble you call a brain! This is your concern? What the lizard is going to eat? You! It's going to eat you!"

_"Actually, they're vegetarian..."_ Sarah tried to explain as sister Joseph continued.

_"You're not worried at all that you might get scattered across the universe as a result of one of sister Roberta's minor miscalculations?"_ her mind quietly grumbled.

_"Don't worry, sister, we'll test it on you, that way we'll know for sure if it works properly!"_ sister Roberta couldn't help herself.

***

"So, you borrow me from the recent past," Seth started again.

"Yes, a second before, although if I could increase the interval it would certainly improve the efficiency of the system. Less loops," sister Roberta explained patiently.

"Why don't you get me from the present and add a one second delay to the transport time," Seth asked.

"I could," sister Roberta agreed, "but then you'd be one second out of sync with us, which is exactly what we're trying to avoid.

"But past me is out of sync too, isn't this supposed to be instantaneous?" Seth asked logically.

"It takes a second to start the machine," sister Roberta answered.

"What if it takes longer?" Seth asked.

"Well, then we'd have to readjust the timer," Roberta continued unperturbed.

"And that would be bad?" Seth responded in the same tone.

"Unless you're willing to have two yous walking around," sister Roberta continued.

"But if I'm gone for an hour, let's say, it doesn't matter that I come back a minute sooner," Seth continued her logical argument.

"I think it's best to keep our times synchronized, just so we don't run into anomalies," sister Roberta disagreed.

_"You mean like translating a slice of time through thirteen light years?"_ sister Joseph intervened through the interlink.

_"I was thinking more in terms of Seth not having to watch another her pop out of the machine every second,"_ Roberta replied.

_"You don't scare me, you know. I've known you long enough! As soon as this thing is ready to go, I'm going to Soléa. Do you think Sarah is the only one who longs to see dragons?"_ sister Joseph retorted.

_"What if the doomsday machine misfires and brings you back in triplicate?"_ sister Roberta joked ominously.

_"That would be my gift to you!"_ sister Joseph offered charitably.

The solenoid looked simple indeed, but the fine tuning of the timelines took forever. There was also the little matter of returning from the trip, which brought up the necessity of building another device to pass through the first one.

_"Purple. Go. Earth. Soléa."_ the immortals murmured. _"Purple. See. Different. Planets."_

_"You don't find this dangerous?"_ Sarah asked, worried.

_"Giant. Funny. Purple. Go."_ the immortals sounded amused.

"If we send a probe to Earth there's no telling how they're going to react. What would you think if some piece of machinery materialized out of nothing?" sister Novis objected.

"If we tell them first, we'd have to wait for months to get the message through and the answer back," sister Felix noted.

"I'd say go ahead and send it. They'll figure it out," sister Mary-Francis recommended.

"Well, it would probably take more than a year to put it together anyway," sister Roberta thought aloud.

"Then we could send something older than one second, you know, to save time," sister Novis replied.

"But then we'd have to build extra loops to make the solenoid go backwards," sister Roberta continued her train of thought.

"Can you make it work backwards?" sister Benedict asked, curious as always.

"That depends of what you mean by backwards," sister Roberta pondered. "We can make it go farther back," she said.

"But still going only forward," sister Benedict clarified.

"Yes," sister Roberta agreed. "I can't imagine what this device would do working backwards," she mumbled, confused.

"It's always good to have all the options covered before we use it," sister Benedict continued. "I assume that if it were to work backwards it would have to take a particle from the immediate future and move it back a second in time to revert it to a previously held position," she took her argument to its logical conclusion.

"What in places does this have to do with reality!?" sister Novis exploded. "What rational person would attempt such a thing!"

"What rational person would attempt the opposite version of it?" sister Joseph muttered. "You're all crazy and you're driving me crazy too. I'm going home! I don't want to hear anymore about this until it is ready!" she got up.

_"Sister. Stay. Learn."_ Purple whispered.

"You too! Darn planet! Darn time travel!" she blurted.

"It's not time travel, actually..." sister Roberta intervened, but sister Joseph was on a roll.

"Don't you think you'll discourage me by running time backwards, fiends! Once the dreadful machine is working I'm going to Soléa!" she hissed as she walked out the door.

Chapter Twenty

### Of Dragons

It felt strange to the sisters to walk behind the children in the bright magnesium light of Soléa, stranger still to follow Lily's lead and watch her dispatch directions to her childhood friends with the authority of a five star general.

There was no hesitation in her demeanor, no shadows in her eyes when she gazed towards the horizon as if trying to see miles beyond it, curious, eager, fearless. Sarah almost thought she could see a young Seth standing beside her, giving instructions to the construction team in the middle of the brick colored desert of Terra Two, just as sure of herself as Lily was at the same age, also for no reason at all.

The redhead couldn't help a smile to the bemusement of the real Seth who was standing three feet away from her with one of her legendary stares in her transparent eyes and a deep furrow between her eyebrows. Physically she hadn't changed since then but Sarah could see the fire in her eyes mellow over time, her moves become less impetuous, her bearing attain a permanent state of poise that seemed to literally emanate from her being the way it did during daily service.

They appeared close in age, Seth and Lily, but a closer look immediately revealed the senior. Seth commanded over her environment anywhere, whether it was Earth, Terra Two or Soléa. She didn't inhabit a space, she filled it and imparted it with her personality the way a lake creates a microclimate for water plants in the middle of a forest.

Soléa had plenty of good water, which brought a grunt from sister Joseph who had always taken it personally that Terra Two didn't come with drinkable water and abundant oxygen. The sister scanned the landscape with uncharacteristic excitement, trying to spot any trace of blue among the bristly foliage. Unfortunately for her the dragons were shy and knew all the good places to hide, there was no trace of scale or wing anywhere.

Lily stepped forward with great assurance and the team followed her without asking where they were going, happy to feel the warmth of the sun on their skin. The sudden temperature drop between the equatorial climate of Terra Two and the temperate climate of Soléa made them feel a little chilly.

They walked quietly for about an hour and stopped at the edge of a small pond whose shores were crisscrossed with little webbed footsteps. A tentative coo echoed from behind one of the Oma trees, followed by a cascade of responses from fellow lizards. A trio of scaly heads emerged from behind the tree trunk and squeaked at the group; the dragon cautiously decided to keep the other two heads behind the tree until it could assess the new situation. Lily approached it slowly and the dragon took off, fluttering its hollow boned wings and whistling like a pigeon. A flash of blue zapped across the sky faster than lightening and disappeared behind a tall bluish rock. The other lizards cooed in approval, invisible in the colorful fluffy foliage of the Oma tree.

Sarah had never seen sister Joseph smile but now the latter was chuckling and jumping around like a child, trying to catch a glimpse of the gleaming lizards and cooing like they did to attract their attention. A tiny dragon, well camouflaged in the low growing bristle, flew at her feet faster than quicksilver, brushing her leg with its leathery wings in the process.

"I saw one, sister, it's right there! Don't go any further, you'll scare it away!" sister Novis directed the search.

"I think if you coo, maybe they'll come out," sister Mary-Francis added her opinion.

"No, don't coo, it'd be easier if you caught them by surprise!" sister Jesse objected.

"What exactly are you trying to do?" Seth asked, faithful to logic.

"Here's one!" Sarah exclaimed, and the combined noise of their conversation alerted an entire flock of lizards which took off in such large numbers it looked like the ground itself lifted up.

"Great job, cat-brains! You just can't stop yakking, can you! I get one joy in this dimwit ridden life and you manage to join your ineptitude and take it away from me!" sister Joseph turned around furiously. "If I asked you to scare them away you couldn't wrestle a sound to do it, you waste of purple goo! Shut up!" she continued, more and more irate. The sisters turned quieter than an empty room, watching intently as the fuming Joseph, her smile now gone, tried to lure another flock of dragons.

As luck would have it the sister's animal whisperer gift didn't work on cows alone. With the benefit of quiet she managed to get the correct tone of voice that inspired trust in the wary dragons. A slightly larger one, the apparent leader, advanced cautiously towards her and stopped three feet away, staring curiously at the weird alien with all its twenty yellow cat eyes. It started blinking from the first head on the left and the blink propagated through the row of heads until it reached the other end. Sister Joseph was mesmerized with excitement and couldn't make a sound, so the dragon broke the silence by uttering blood curdling screeches from a few of its heads and stretching its wings to make itself look more imposing. The sun of Soléa's shone on the blue metallic scales making them sparkle like precious gems and casting rainbows from shoulder to tip.

_"You really are noisy, aren't you?"_ sister Joseph thought, watching the surreal creature that looked like a scaled down model of the legendary dragon. Standing only two foot tall, Soléa's lizards were closer in size to a dog, if a dog were blue and had scales, wings, three eyelids and five heads.

The dragon screeched again, this time approaching sister Joseph, and stretched out one of its long necks towards her hand, keeping the other four alert with the frills around them fanned out to show the unfamiliar audience it meant business.

"Aren't you the prettiest sight to behold!" sister Joseph said gently and smiled to encourage the guarded creature.

"Screeech!!" the dragon answered, relaxing its war posturing just a bit.

"The loveliest creature we've been blessed with in this vast universe!" the sister continued the cajoling.

"Screech-screech!" the dragon answered, somewhat pleased.

_"You know, we can keep some in one of the greenhouses,"_ Sarah offered to appease Joseph.

_"Ah, you figured! Why don't you all find something to do, this is going to take a while,"_ the latter smiled like the Sphinx and sat down to make herself less scary. The sisters backed out gently, careful not to scare the wary flock that started to gather around sister Joseph.

***

Lily gestured directions and the group followed her towards a gentle bluff overlooking the water that gave them good visibility all the way to the horizon. They set camp for the night, watching the sky darken gradually and trying to guess which of the unfamiliar constellations was home. In the middle of the sky, outshining every other star, Antares glowed bright orange, splendid like an amber jewel in a black velvet box. Sister Roberta sighed almost imperceptibly, but Sarah had keen ears.

"Do you miss home, sister?" she asked gently.

"Which home, dear?" the sister answered. Far away from both Earth and Terra Two her 'new' home bonds began to melt and much older memories surfaced, helped out by the scarcer landscape of Soléa. Roberta pictured tiny boats in the natural harbor in front of her, and the screeches of the dragons sounded like orcas in the sunset. Her childhood was still picking seashells off the beach at Puerto Deseado in the cool winds of June when Sarah's voice startled her.

"Where do you think Earth is?" Sarah asked to cheer her up, feeling slightly guilty that her own heart was bound with Purple strings. She almost had a panic attack earlier thinking what would happen if the time slide didn't work in reverse. The thirteen year trip all of the sudden seemed desirable and a small price to pay in order to get back to her Garden of Eden bathed in vanilla and gardenia fragrance. She strengthened her grasp on the tiny box where the Purple delegation was living it up in boron plenty. Purple hadn't said a single word since their arrival on Soléa, thrilled by the new experience and trying to take it all in.

Sister Roberta didn't answer. She frowned at the sky, scanning the unrecognizable constellations, then pointed assuredly at a non-descript corner in the eastern quadrant of the firmament.

"Now how can you be so sure? You've never seen these star configurations before!" Sarah protested.

"Of course I know! Don't you recognize the Milky Way? I'm pretty sure Earth is somewhere in that corner," she explained to a puzzled Sarah who couldn't read the Milky Way in the random light splashes in the sky.

"What about Terra Two?" the latter asked eagerly.

"Frankly, I have no idea!" sister Roberta shrugged her shoulders.

"Then how do you know how to get us back?" Sarah asked and little tears of panic gathered in the corners of her eyes.

"Stop fretting, dear! It's all pre-programmed," sister Roberta answered with no trepidation whatsoever.

"You're counting on the machine to chart our path?" Sarah exclaimed.

"It brought us here, didn't it?" sister Roberta replied calmly. "Sleep now, tomorrow it's going to be a long day."

***

The sun was only half way up the horizon the following morning when sister Joseph showed up with a dragon on her shoulder. She never told anybody how she mesmerized the creature, but from that day forward it followed her around like a shadow. The blue lizard screeched, almost like a gurgle, and ruffled the frills around one of its heads.

"Can you check the composition of the local plants?" the sister whispered to Sarah, waking her up from her sleep. Sarah didn't say anything, she got up, grabbed a handful of bristly growies and dumped them in the tissue scanner. The plant structure was a little different, the cells were much larger and had thicker linings than Sarah was used to seeing, but the chemical make-up was almost identical with that of the plant life on Terra Two.

"We can bring back plants too, you know? Or we can synthesize some of these shrubs in the lab, I'm sure Sys won't have any trouble doing that," Sarah smiled.

"Don't you try to be so smart! I don't want you feeding made-up food to my pet!" sister Joseph snapped, waking the others.

Lily got ready in silence while the rest of the group fumbled with the gear, breakfast and filling the canteens with water.

"We rendezvous with the Antares deep space station research team at noon and their camp is a three hour hike from here," Lily said. "We'd better get going."

They arrived at the camp four and a half hours later (the added time was due to the sudden and unplanned stops for sight-seeing, water gathering, lizard spotting and picture taking with Oma trees, to Lily and Seth's annoyance), dusty and tired and in the company of the very respectable sister Joseph whose shoulder dragon made her look like a pirate.

Purple finally exhausted its silence and was now a veritable chatterbox, commenting on every stick, pebble and scale they encountered and turning Sys into a frazzled mess by remote.

"Oma. Sister. Dragon. Sister. Love. Dragon. Dragon. Cat." Sys babbled like a rogue robot.

"Dragons are not like cats," Sarah explained patiently.

"Dragon. Cat." Purple insisted and Sarah let it go. She knew how unbelievably stubborn the immortals could be.

"I don't believe this!" the research team leader exclaimed. "You know, we've been trying to catch one of these things for months, nothing gets past that sea of eyes! How did you..." he started asking, but the expression on sister Joseph's face didn't encourage further communication, so he hesitated.

"I have my ways," the former responded vaguely. They spent the remainder of the day exchanging data, verifying research and making plans for the Terra Two team that was going to be left behind for a period of time yet to be determined. Lily was going to lead the effort and many of Sarah's pupils were on her team. They were all grown up now but the redhead could still picture them giggling and fussing about the lab and pulling pranks on each other around the metal tables they were barely tall enough to see over. To Sarah's unspoken relief Sys was way too attached to Purple to stay away for long and was already missing her music studio.

They set up the communication systems, the portals to Terra Two, Earth and the deep space station, gathered plant, soil and water samples, took plenty of pictures with the Oma trees, the lakes and the dragons, planned their next visit and were eager to leave.

One can trick the body but one can't deceive the spirit. Despite their youthful appearance the sisters had old souls and felt even older watching the children take over the adventure that was their life. The existential struggle seemed to be lost on Purple who had lived its eternal life untarnished by the passing of time and still managed to get excited by anything new.

"Ready, sisters? We have to stop by Earth on our way home, let's not diddle-daddle!" sister Roberta said in the most serious tone of voice and nobody even blinked at the enormity of the statement.

Chapter Twenty One

### Of Feelings

"Get away, you pest! Oh, just wait until I get my hands on you, you little ingrate!" Sarah screamed at the dragon who stared at her innocently with two of its heads as it continued munching on aloe vera with the other three. Half of the leaves on the gardenia shrubs were consumed to the bare branches and Solomon had found refuge all the way up one of the pear trees, hissing like a tea kettle with all its fur standing on end.

"Don't you talk like that to my dragon! Come here, sweetie, did she hurt you?" sister Joseph came quickly to the lizard's defense.

"You were concerned what it was going to eat? It eats everything in sight, it's an unstoppable garden wrecking machine, and it's not picky either! Check out the hot pepper patch, your beast has no taste buds! I replanted the aloe vera five times already!" Sarah protested, really flustered and trying to look menacing to the lizard. The dragon watched her innocently, attempted a gurgle and blinked its eyes in series. _"I swear if you weren't so cute!"_ Sarah thought. _"Sister Joseph finally lost it! She wouldn't dream of letting the goats have free reign of the vegetable patch but she has no problem allowing mini-Godzilla here to run havoc through the land!"_

"It's not like I can't hear you! You stay away from my dragon, it's infinitely more interesting than any one of you!" sister Joseph picked up the lizard who blinked at Sarah and then half-closed its yellow eyes feeling protected and content in its owner's arms; the redhead could swear she saw one of the muzzles sketch a little smirk like a reptilian Cheshire cat.

_"You may swindle sister Joseph who gave into her weakness, but you don't fool me with that innocent stare, you evildoer! Stay away from my plants and leave Solomon alone!"_ Sarah frowned furiously at the dragon.

"Screech!" the dragon uttered cheerfully.

"You tell me if she bothers you and I'll give her a piece of my mind! And I won't be shy about it either!" Joseph coddled the creature as the rest of the sisters collectively burst in Homeric, albeit inner laughter.

Sister Joseph named the beast Josephine despite the fact they haven't figured out yet if dragons had genders (if someone were able to ascertain that fact it would have been the sister herself). Joseph didn't take this detail into consideration when she decided the dragon would be a 'she' and allowed 'her' to share her name. Nobody could argue with the sister about the behavior of her beloved pet, Josephine could do no wrong in her eyes and showed such devotion to her master that it was allowed to follow her everywhere with the exception of the Prayer Hall and that only because the sisters decided the line needed to be drawn somewhere.

A second mat was placed on the other side of the Prayer Hall door and Josephine lay there munching on veggie snacks for the duration of the service, eyeing Solomon with a couple of its heads and making the cat bristle its fur and push its ears back.

Josephine was loud, especially when discontented, and the sisters learned it was less unpleasant to accommodate her whims than to put up with the horrid noise, but otherwise she proved to be an adorable creature who gleamed through the Institute hallways in intense cobalt blue looking like she had just come down from the Gates of Ishtar.

The original idea was to keep her in one of the desert greenhouse environments but Josephine didn't take well to being confined and screeched their ears off until they let her out to the absolute delight of the children, visitors and science delegations and the chagrin of Sarah for whom protecting the crops became a full time occupation.

She remembered her daydream about petting a peacefully resting dragon who was supposed to lie cooing at her feet but nobody other than sister Joseph ever managed to touch the scratchy lizard. It turned out that dragons were really fast runners when they didn't fly and were not shy to use their five sets of teeth if annoyed. Josephine had the activity level and temper tantrums of a toddler and after putting up with the biting, clawing and deafening screeches Sarah resigned herself to admire the creature from a distance and breathed a little sigh of relief when it was quiet.

***

"Are you letting the dragon roam free? Aren't you worried it's going to attack the children?" doctor O'Shaughnessy asked, concerned. He had brought his own toddler to Terra Two and the sight of the seemingly vicious lizard ran shivers down his spine. The little boy on the other hand was absolutely enthralled with the alien creature and didn't seem to question the fact that it had five heads.

"Not at all! Josephine is the sweetest thing and completely harmless!" Sarah said with a level of conviction that seemed a little suspect. _"I can't believe I have to defend the wretch after she practically destroyed my garden! What am I saying, we don't even know it's a 'she', there's a good side project for sister Joseph! She's the animal specialist, she should be able to figure that out!"_ her mind rummaged quietly.

Josephine stared at them turning one of its heads sideways like a chicken to get a better view. It gurgled, took a few steps forward and pecked at whatever was left of the cauliflower patch. Sarah uttered a sigh and resolved to put an invisible fence around the vegetable garden before the lizard finished it off.

"Josephine is part of the family," sister Joseph intervened, concerned that the little boy might rough handle her beloved pet, as if anything on two legs could outrun the blue lightning, especially at his age!

"Come here, sweetheart!" the sister enticed Josephine and the latter batted its wings leisurely to jump on her shoulder. "Say 'hi' to the nice people!" Joseph encouraged and Josephine uttered a random sequence of little screeches from a few of her heads.

"Who's a good dragon?" the sister asked.

"Screech-screech!" Josephine replied, fluffing the frills around her heads.

_"Shiver me timbers! Now the only things she's missing are an eye patch and a peg leg!"_ Sarah thought.

"I'm not missing them at all," sister Joseph frowned at the latter, to the confusion of the visitor who wasn't wearing an interlink bracelet. "Would you care for a tour of the Institute, doctor?" she graciously asked the guest, then left with Josephine, the doctor and his son. The lizard's tail swayed gently in the breeze while a dozen of her eyes looked back reproachfully at Sarah. Sarah got annoyed that the dragon stole her thunder and was now conducting the tours but slightly relieved that she got an hour to herself to tinker with recipes in the apothecary.

No such luck, though, because when she arrived at the shop she found Gemma running a large experiment that required virtually all the glassware and equipment. The teenager smiled apologetically when she saw Sarah come in.

"I'm making something for Jimmy and Jenna, they must miss home!" she said.

_"And home surely misses them,"_ Sarah thought, taking a moment to remember that Jimmy and Jenna were not children anymore. "What are you making?" she asked curiously.

"A globe shaped terrarium with miniature Terra Two plants," she said. "It's completely self-sufficient, it should be able to keep itself in balance indefinitely."

"Oh, I see you even included Purple, they'll be pleased to send a delegation!" Sarah smiled. In the middle of the Lilliputian landscape a minute graft of the bean plant flourished, half green, half purple, just like the original. "What's with all the dirty glassware?" she asked, puzzled.

"Soil, air and water testing, the chemical balance has to be perfect," Gemma said, and that's when Sarah noticed that the miniature planet had rivulets and lakes and tides in its oceans, and up in its atmosphere fluffy clouds gathered, releasing sudden showers over the toy sized rain forest.

"What, no cats?" the redhead joked. "You know, there are a lot of visiting horticulturists in the Institute right now, maybe it would be a good idea to show them a presentation of your project before you send it to Soléa, I don't think anybody ever made something like this before."

***

With all the back and forth between Terra Two and Soléa the solenoid attained the well worn look of an old favorite sweater that gets softer and more comfortable after many washes.

Restless parents found every reason imaginable to slide through time back and forth with warm clothing, fresh baked pies or favorite and woefully unavailable fruit.

Lily and her exploration team were past the eye-roll age, even though not by much, and wore down the device just as much from the other end, coming back often to Terra Two to grab the music they forgot to pack, their sculpting tools, their scuba gear.

Because the dragons were quite friendly, though not trustful enough for contact, some of Sarah's kids made regular trips home to bring them delightful succulent treats from their planet, so different from the dragons' scraggly diet and so flavorful in comparison. Despite Lily's impossible to enforce ban on bringing alien food to upset their regular fare, Jimmy snuck back to Terra Two on a regular basis to bring fresh vegetables he pretended to eat himself, so many that he had to print a couple of extra refrigerators to store the kale and lettuce the blue lizards liked so much.

Their accommodations were modest to say the least because it was decided Soléa's environment was too pristine to be developed and it was to be disturbed as little as possible. The children had never seen a wilderness like this, born as they were in a world made by hand, a place designed from the bare ground and filled with plants and animals brought from Earth. Soléa was rugged and cold like the top of the mountains, worn by winds and overwhelmed by the vastness of its deep blue sky.

Its vegetation was low and cast almost no shadows on the archaic rock formations and its topography looked frozen in time shortly after the ground hardened, harsh like it had just emerged from the bowels of its molten core and showing strangely little wear for a planet haunted by the winds. Everything had a blue hue on Soléa, mostly because of the refraction in its thick atmosphere, but not entirely so. There was blue and azure in the rocks themselves from the aluminum salt deposits, and the peculiar prismatic structure of the dragons' skins only let out the color of the sky.

Here and there in long dried river beds the water had carved and polished the soluble rocks into giant sculptural masterpieces, round, hollow and twisted like frozen waves, with stunningly beautiful grain hugging their curves. Far in the distance tall limestone needles glowed violet against the horizon like a stone forest.

The scarce vegetation rarely covered the ground and their team carved no paths through the bristle, they just walked around it following the tracks of the dragons to the best watering holes, the thickest clumps of Oma trees or the soft sandy shores of the mirror lakes where the blue residents of the planet built their nests undisturbed.

Flocks of dragons flew majestically overhead watching the newcomers with tolerant dignity almost as if they wanted to guide them on their way and show them their beautiful world. Everything seemed quieter in the blue land, everything but the calls of the dragons and the song of the wind.

The children of Terra Two unconsciously softened their unrestrained vigor and assumed the reverence one finds in the depths of a cathedral as the blinding radiance of the sun descended upon them through the thick sky and wrapped their shoulders in light like in a blanket.

The unrelenting brightness of the solitary sun didn't feel that unusual to the sisters, who had grown up on Earth, but it felt very intimidating to the tanned and care free children of the tropical forest born to warmth and rain and they missed the rosy chocolate skies and the gentle gems of their two suns like one misses the roof over their head when one has to sleep under the open sky.

Soléa's sky made them restless and overwhelmed them with its vastness like an unknown depth of a sea and sometimes when they were almost asleep they were jolted awake by the feeling of falling in it.

Chapter Twenty Two

### Of the Wilderness

They woke up early and gathered their gear in silence, a little chilly in the brisk morning air. The sun was peeking above the horizon making the edge of the planet glow an intense yellow. The dragons had assembled in a circle around the small group, faithful to their ancestral instinct to protect their young. Seen from above their group resembled a gigantic blue flower with its center swarmed by bees.

They finished packing and as they started towards the living boundary the dragons flew out of their way to let them pass opening a gigantic gate made of scales and wings into the sky. The leader of the pack started a V formation and the dragons took off together to guide the humans on their way.

The light was still scarce when they arrived to the gentle hummock projected on the horizon; they strolled quietly following grade and slowly advanced to the top where they stopped to take in the peaceful mirror of the sea, the wavy contours of the hills, the blue green vegetation softening sharp stony edges. The dragons stopped with them, re-forming their protective circle around the youngsters.

Lily had suggested through the interlink to stop and rest. Her peers were so used to this means of communication they didn't even form fully phrased thoughts anymore, they just advanced their intentions in some sort of shorthand, mixing in images and Purple music and making the condensed language almost unrecognizable.

There was no real schedule of activities for this adventure, they had decided at the beginning of the trip to go where the exploration took them. The dragons made things much easier by guiding them to the places they thought most worthy of seeing based on their interests and instincts: clear waters, sheltered valleys, thick clumps with yummy things to eat.

The group took some soil and rock samples, fed a tiny schist to Purple so the immortals could perform their own analysis and took a much closer look at the low bristle laying at their feet. The rough foliage resembled junipers but on closer look their entire branches consisted of one singular leaf, fringed like an eyelash and twirling around itself all the way to the top. Every so often the plant grew a spiky thorn on the strand, thorn which was really hard to discern by just looking at them but was immediately made evident to the skin if one had the misfortune to brush against it. The vegetation was all the same, as if Soléa had been too lazy to evolve its plant life. The latter only came in two flavors: bristly blue green low growth and cotton candy pastel Oma trees.

You couldn't help but feel peaceful on Soléa, it emanated peace from every rock, body of water and cloud in the sky, but its peacefulness was cold and sparse, elating and chilling the human heart at the same time. No matter how many people were around on the shining blue gem next to the heart of Scorpius one felt alone, in part because the constant winds impeded conversations by dampening every sound, and in part because everything in the landscape felt so solemn and intimidating one was compelled to silence without even realizing it.

Lily had been dreaming about this kind of adventure ever since she could remember and just another habitable planet in a neighboring galaxy was nothing compared to her lofty dreams of space exploration, but even if she wasn't going to admit it Soléa intimidated her. Every time she caught a glance of the biosphere Gemma had made for Jimmy and Jenna her heart was filled with longing for the warmth of home.

For the deep space traveler it was the night sky that made all the difference and she spent months on end sitting outside to watch the stars, trying to recognize familiar constellations, even if some of them were skewed, backwards or upside down, and charting the new ones as fast as she could manage. She felt like Magellan gazing at never before seen stellar fields, proud to give them names, soon becoming as familiar with many of them as an earthly stargazer would be with Ursa Major or the North Star.

The telescope they had brought from Terra Two wasn't the most sophisticated but it still fed Lily's hunger to see behind the stars in front of her, to wonder at constellations she really couldn't see from Earth or Terra Two, just a few tens of light years past the edge of the 'visible universe'.

She gazed at the places past the veil of physical limitations avid to see if the reality beyond was any different, as if it were what her eyes could see and not the unified laws of physics that organized the structure of matter. The stars beyond the 'visibility horizon' looked exactly the same as the ones next to them, maybe a little older due to the added distance and that disappointed her a little.

For a few months they moved around, surrounded by the dutiful dragons who either showed them the way or encircled their group like a living rampart. The travelers didn't pay too much attention to this detail at first, considering it a peculiar habit of the native species and feeling comforted by their protective instincts, and as time went by they ignored the standard circle formation altogether, much in the way one doesn't question the color of the sky.

"Don't you ever wonder what the dragons are trying to protect us from?" Lily asked Jimmy who was sitting next to her and poked at the little camp fire as the sun was getting ready to set. The young man was startled by the question, his mind was wondering back to the home he missed dearly but he couldn't admit it to the others. During evenings like this when the wind reverberated even louder among the rocky cliffs unsettling thoughts made him restless.

"Protect? No... I don't know! Why do you think they're trying to protect us?" he asked, slightly displeased for having been distracted from his ruminations.

As if waiting for a sign, the dragons took flight together, approached the humans, suddenly picked them up in their sharp claws and held them six or seven feet off the ground to the youngsters' absolute panic. The humans couldn't understand this completely unexpected behavior and would have started reflecting on the recklessness of allowing themselves to sit unguarded next to a pack of flying aliens endowed with fangs and claws but all their attention got drawn to the ground below: the sharp edged greenery uprooted itself as if summoned by an unseen force and moved away really fast, leaving the ground completely bare. It waved across the landscape in one sweeping motion and settled down a few hundred feet away where the 'plants' extended their tap roots into the ground and unfurled their sharp edged fringes as if the move never happened at all. The dragons put the humans down gently and went back to their circle formation.

"What just happened?" Jenna managed to articulate, still in shock.

"I guess we can safely assume the bristle is not a plant," Lily hesitantly replied. "Makes you wonder about the Oma trees, too. I wonder what started them off now?"

"Transhumance," Jimmy postulated. "I guess those sharp thorns are not too friendly to the skin. Judging by the dragons' eagerness even tough scales can't handle them very well." He looked at the blue lizards in an attempt to thank them but the reptiles were all fast asleep with their heads hidden under their wings so that the light of the setting sun didn't get through their eyelids.

"How often do you think this happens!?" Jenna asked, seriously disturbed by the strange phenomenon. Lily would have liked to have an answer to that question as she gazed at the bristle field under the clump of Oma trees back in the distance. They looked so innocently plant like that she paused for a second to wonder if they haven't been subjected to a group hallucination but the proof was right in front of her eyes or rather missing from underneath her feet.

"I imagine this is why they build their nests on the beach, no moving razor wire," Jenna continued aggravated. "I feel like I woke up on the set of the Wizard of Oz during the flying monkeys scene. How did they manage to pick us up, they're a fifth our size! We really should pay a lot more attention to details, what if they were hostile?" she continued blabbing to appease her fear.

Lily didn't answer. Like travelers from times long gone she had set sail into the unknown to discover lands of wonder and unexpected quirkiness, not knowing what they'll reveal or if they'll tolerate her presence and just like the old explorers she relied on pluckiness, sheer luck and the prayers and well wishes of her people to go through her travels unscathed. She made a note to self that the dragons were indeed not vegetarian, at least not in the sense humans attached to the term, and hoped they didn't think she might taste yummy. It took the group a lot longer to fall asleep that night even though everyone was exhausted by the long hike and the emotional hullaballoo at the beginning of the evening. They lay on the now barren ground uncomfortably eyeing the dragons and wondering what the lizards were going to do next, but the dragons were sleeping like rocks, accustomed as they were to the periodic annoyance and trying to regain the energy they had expanded in their effort.

***

The news of animals with roots brought sister Joseph back to Soléa faster than the jingle of the ice cream truck lures children to the front door. In two shakes of a lamb's tail she was right there with the exploration team, loaded with research equipment, solar calendar studies and graphs to track the patterns of the phenomenon.

She had left Josephine on Terra Two out of an unspoken concern the dragon might change its mind and prefer the company of its own kind. The sister had gotten used to having her lizard follow everywhere so she missed her pet and was as she announced to the group upon arrival, not in a good mood.

The youngsters gave her space, respectfully, and went about their business trying to stay out of her way as she deliberately canvassed the planet for months searching for evidence of the bristle displacement until the next migration occurred. A small flock of dragons appointed themselves her sentries and shadowed her wherever she went, just like Josephine, but the sister didn't manage to mesmerize any of them, no matter how hard she tried. She gave up eventually, admitting that maybe she and Josephine were meant to be; she missed the latter's conversational screeches and even Sarah's loud protests against the lizard's incursions into the vegetable garden.

What the sister found out at the end of two long years of commuting between Terra Two and Soléa was that the bristle moved like clockwork during solstice and equinox following a circular pattern around the planet, always moving east with the prevailing winds in search of rain soaked land where mineral rich water was readily available. She was very eager to find out if the Oma trees were migrating too but unfortunately she couldn't spend any more time away from her duties.

Anyway, after she contemplated the fact that the 'plants' she had brought to acclimate on Terra Two were most likely already migrating, and that between the fragrant cats, the jumping rocks, the children's experiments with the landscape and the talking ocean there was only so much weirdness a visitor could take she sorrowfully left the treasure trove of exobiology on Soléa and went back home to put together a tourist orientation program before somebody got shaken out of their sanity by eerie events.

Sarah was eagerly awaiting her return in sister Roberta's lab and gave the traveler such a warm welcome it made sister Joseph wonder if the redhead had lost her mind. Sarah had been in charge of Josephine for the entire duration of sister Joseph's research trip and the lizard had run her ragged with its whims and its raids on the garden. She gratefully delivered the healthy and plump five headed screecher to its owner and sighed with relief as she watched sister Joseph walk away with Josephine wobbling proudly behind her.

The redhead went back to her healing garden, threw herself carelessly on one of the stone benches in the shade of the pear trees and for the first time in two years, rested.

Chapter Twenty Three

### Of Vocation

Sister Joseph's sudden arrival and departure from Soléa left the youngsters insecure and missing home. Despite being given the extraordinary chance to discover everything the universe had to offer, despite the thirst to know that drove them to the other side of the galaxy they felt vulnerable and alone on this strange cold planet, not because they couldn't handle their tasks, but because they found themselves with no reason for performing them.

It is not that they were constantly told what to do on Terra Two, goodness knows it would have been hard to have a less hands on approach to child rearing than that of their parents' and the sisters', after all living in a world without peril does come with wonderful opportunities for self-discovery, but as they grew and experimented with life there was always someone there to give them comfort and advice, someone wiser, who had the answers to their questions, someone who loved them and kept them from harm. Because the sisters didn't grow old the issue of coming of age never occurred to the children who assumed the former will always be there at their beck and call.

Now they were on their own and when they turned around for solace or confirmation they were met only by the wind. It was unsettling, the constant wind of Soléa, singing and resonating among the rocks, heartless and unrelenting, moving with the natural order of things, of much larger things than themselves.

Their unanticipated vulnerability made them look for safe haven but there was no refuge on the cold blue planet, everything was out in the open and exposed to the winds.

Lily wondered how the sisters kept their composure when they first arrived on Terra Two and considered the fact that maybe their daily prayer service held a lot more meaning than she thought. Growing up with the sisters she couldn't miss their faith in God but she always saw deity as an all encompassing entity who was out there and ruled all things, not something that she could interact with or speak to. Come to think of it, Soléa and her perception of God seemed to be fashioned from the same essence: bright, distant, beautiful and silent.

Lily reviewed all the spiritual knowledge she had accumulated in her young life, poring over logical pros and cons, reliving the philosophical society debates, going over whatever she thought she knew about life and meaning, raring to find the solution, the conclusion, the way forward, trying to understand her part in this exceedingly vast and sophisticated machinery of the universe that was unfolding before her eyes and goodness knows how far past the limitations of human gaze. The only feeling she could come up with about the splendid world before her eyes was that of a haunting absence. There was something she missed painfully, something Soléa didn't have and wouldn't allow her to have it either, a caring soul.

The winds kept blowing inexorably as if to make her aware how small and lost she was in the larger order of things and she started questioning her cosmic ambitions, her resilience, her drive. She took every opportunity to go back to Terra Two where things were just as she remembered them and spent a lot of time around the sisters who were both pleasantly surprised and slightly perturbed by her constant tagging along, but she couldn't figure out the secret to their balance. There never seemed to be any need for spiritual counsel in the living paradise that was their home. As soon as she got back to Soléa, though, the ghost of insignificance shadowed her again, woven in the wind.

That's when Seth arrived unexpectedly to Soléa, all by herself, just to check on the progress of the young team and get an idea of their future plans.

There couldn't possibly be a more awkward small talk than that between Lily and Seth, who were both direct, self-motivated individuals with a million plans in progress at every moment and for whom idle chatter was a pointless waste of time.

"Welcome to Soléa," Lily said cheerfully and then couldn't figure out a single subject of conversation. What was there to talk about? The windy planet was open as the palm of her hand and after you saw one location of it you've seen it all.

"I trust you're well," Seth helped out uncomfortably. "How is your research going?" she continued. Lily breathed a sigh of relief that she had something practical to talk about and over the next several hours she gave the leader a complete account of their research activities, the feature mapping, the habits of animal life and the very boring climate of Soléa. Seth listened carefully to her report, but listened even more attentively to her thoughts, as they had their bracelets on, trying to figure out ways to ease the burden of the young woman's existential angst. She felt responsible for not taking more time to deepen the children's understanding of the unseen waters of the soul and of the loving presence of God. Eventually Lily finished speaking and they walked in silence for a while.

"Your heart is troubled," the leader spoke in a soothing tone, but her words took the young woman by surprise and made her startle.

"I'm sure it's nothing," Lily brushed her off, "the wind can be disquieting," she continued. As if to enforce her point the air movements reverberated against the rocks in weird harmonies. It almost sounded like Purple music at times, but Seth didn't want to point that out to the already distressed Lily who found nothing warm or familiar in the relentless call of the wind.

"How long are you going to be here?" Seth asked in an unquestionable tone.

"I beg your pardon?" Lily blurted, perplexed.

"You don't belong here, Lily. None of you do. It's taking a toll on you and distracting you from your purpose. Weren't you going to travel beyond the edges of the universe?" Seth asked. The stark questioning reinforced the young woman's feelings of inadequacy and almost brought her to tears. If she couldn't make it for a couple of years on a reasonably habitable planet how was she going to make it out there? The leader shook her head.

"What is there for you to do here other than allow the wind to drive you mad? Sarah is very worried about you, your parents too, we all are," she continued gently. "If this were the place for you, you'd be happy and fulfilled, look at sister Joseph, she can barely wait to sneak out and visit."

Lily thought how at ease sister Joseph looked among the dragons, walking alone for days in the sparsely populated fields open to the winds. What was it that she knew, what kept her soul at peace and drove her spirit every day in this strange land?

"Well," Seth answered her unasked question, "first of all we're a religious order," she continued obviously uncomfortable about revealing her innermost beliefs. She was going to explain that sister Joseph enjoyed any venue that allowed her to be away from people's 'useless yakking' for a while but she changed her mind and continued. "We rely on God's guidance no matter where we are."

She would have loved to make Lily understand her words beyond the dry linguistic meaning but knew there was no shortcut for the young woman's journey and everyone's soul had to come to peace, balance and wisdom in their own way. "Anyway," she continued, "you classified every rock, animal and body of water on this planet, unless you want to live an ascetic life in the midst of a natural preserve I suggest you wrap up your research and come home."

Throughout this soulful talk the dragons followed them humbly and faithfully and without questioning their purpose, always unfailing guardians, closing a protecting circle around them when they sat down and ready to guide them on their path when they got up.

***

Lily came home as requested but her heart was heavy with what she perceived as the failure of her life plans and with guilt for not being able to love a planet which by any description was one of the most beautiful places in the universe. Just when she thought she found some peace she would run into Josephine wobbling down the corridors of the Institute like the blue ghost of Solea and personification of her inadequacy.

"Get over it! Go visit if you'd like, you don't have to live there!" sister Roberta cut off her mental anguish.

"What if you said the same thing upon coming here, I mightn't even have been born!" Lily protested, revealing the hurt under her short lived adventure.

"I didn't have anything to do with you being born," sister Roberta attempted a little humor to lift the morose youngster from her doldrums. "I love it here, I knew I wanted to be here before we left, that's why I came. You don't have to like a place just because you're capable of traveling there!"

"Purple. Like. Terra. Two. Better." the immortals added their two bits in an effort to console Lily.

"You're just saying that to make me feel better!" the young woman protested.

"Yes." Purple giggled. "Purple. Love. All. Places."

"You heard them!" Lily turned to Roberta, anguished. "How can they love all places and why can't I? I should be thrilled to discover new worlds, this was supposed to be my vocation!"

"Don't let them get to you, you know how they like to tease," sister Roberta quenched the argument. "Listen, while you were away we sent a few probes in various directions and found a couple of planets worth seeing. One of them doesn't have a breathable atmosphere but it spins a crazy doily pattern around a double star system. Temperatures are tolerable and the skies are amazing, you might want to take a look."

***

Lily nursed her wounded self for a while, not wanting to start another venture, and spent a lot more time around the sisters just watching their easy assurance and their contentment with their daily tasks. She followed Sarah around all day and dropped with exhaustion at the end of it wondering how she managed to fit in all her activities and still find time to hush Josephine away from the vegetable patch. She spent a few months in Roberta's lab learning everything there was to know about the solenoid's function.

She took some time to study the images the probes brought back and had to admit, even though still raw from her disappointing experience, that the double star system was filled with a beauty and strangeness no human mind could have conceived with its violet, green and blue iridescence that flashed like so many dancing rainbows across the blackness of space. The stars around the tiny planet without air looked huge and blindingly brilliant due to their close proximity and its dark side never got dimmer than a twilight. The other side was stuck in quasi perpetual daytime due to tidal lock; the planet spun several loops around one of the suns, facing it the entire time, then took its leave, did a half twist at the center of gravity and turned to run crazy loops around the second sun for the other half of the journey, dazzling the observer with its beautiful celestial ballet and feeling much more familiar to the Terra Two child than the singular sun of Soléa could ever be.

"I see I've piqued your interest," sister Roberta commented, pleased.

"It's amazing!" Lily exclaimed, forgetting her philosophical reserve and her recent delving into the meaning of life or lack thereof. "What's its name?" she asked, excited.

"Oh, we wouldn't want to deprive you of this joy, now, would we?" sister Roberta smiled and left the lab to give Lily time to find the best name for this beautiful and eerie new world.

Chapter Twenty Four

### Of Patterns

"Squiggle!?" Seth exclaimed, shocked. "Of all the words in the English language you decided to name this awe inspiring world Squiggle?"

"Actually, its name really is ..." Lily played a major sixth harmony on the gamma ray translator, "but I'm not a nightingale, so I figured Squiggle would be more practical."

Seth sighed. Of all the unintended consequences of developing the Purple language this was ubiquitous and most irritating: people had an irrepressible urge to pepper conversations with Purple words, habit more easily accomplished in thought form than speech pattern for obvious reasons. Seth found Purple harmonies especially jarring when they jumped at her unexpectedly in the middle of a sentence and often wished she could go back in time and not enable this exasperating fad in the first place.

"That means 'wonder at light'", the leader commented, drained. "What possible connection could you find between 'wonder at light' and 'squiggle'!?" she commented, exasperated.

"Try it in a conversation, who can say _'I'm going to wonder at light'_ with a straight face?" Lily explained.

"Why did you choose it then?" Seth couldn't believe her ears.

"Because it does," Lily responded simply.

The sisters shrugged their shoulders and accepted the name Squiggle halfheartedly and without commentary, with the exception of sister Joseph, of course, who mentioned in passing that Josephine, one of the cats or even Sarah could have come up a more dignified name.

The children were very excited about it, however, and during the following months named every single school project after the new planet, wishing they too could go and wondering, just like the Purple name suggested, at its strange beauty. They had squiggle pancakes for breakfast, squiggle t-shirts, squiggle hairdos, squiggle pencils and squiggle behaviors. Sarah's endless patience was severely tried when every experiment in her chemistry lab turned to stringy confetti and every plant in the biology lab blossomed doodles and twirls.

Purple was even more excited than the children, which was no surprise for the sisters, since the immortals had the same emotional level and could play the same games for hours.

"Purple. Love. Squiggle. Squiggle. Sister. Wonder. Light." they chattered enthusiastically.

"It's 'wonder at light'!" Seth corrected them, frustrated and dreading a repeat of the 'water.blue' incident.

"Light..." the immortals whispered, dreamy. "Purple. Go."

"Yes, of course," Seth answered absentminded. "As soon as practical, talk to Lily" , she softly dismissed them.

The trip to Squiggle was not going to be as easy as the one to Soléa, there were a lot of factors to consider: the absence of an atmosphere, the much lower gravity, and more than anything, the nauseating effects the planet's strange revolution patterns could have on human physiology. Lily explained to Roberta that they were not going to stay longer than a few minutes, but the latter couldn't find peace until she dotted every i and crossed every t, concerned with every detail, worried about every contingency, trying to ensure there will be no surprises.

"I don't like this lack of atmosphere thing, not one bit," she kept complaining. Her comments unleashed sister Joseph's sharp tongue and the latter let loose a steady stream of unpleasantness until the other sisters, who had had it with her observations and pointed criticism for the long centuries they had been together, jointly admonished her and threatened to tune out her bracelet.

The sister tried to take offense but her complaints fell on deaf ears, so she decided to go to Soléa for a few months, where, as she pointed out, she could be with creatures who were not only more agreeable than present company, but also smart enough to appreciate her.

"I don't understand why you have to go there at all," sister Roberta babbled at Lily, forgetting that she was the one who brought the young woman the project to begin with. "We have all the information from the probes, what else is there to find?" she commented, unconvincing.

"Fine! I'm not going!" Lily finally exploded, swearing off the whole Squiggle concept and regretting the moment she first laid eyes on the crazy planet.

"No, no," sister Roberta appeased her. "We just don't want to rush into anything, you know, have every eventuality planned for. It's not like we're under time pressure or anything."

"Oh, so I'm going, then?" Lily asked.

"Are you sure this is a good idea? Who knows what can happen, what if gravity doesn't keep you down and we have to rescue you from space? What if the weight of your exploration party gives the planet just enough oomph to spin out of orbit?" the sister continued to prophesy doom. Lily eventually decided not to go, to the sister's great relief, and counted strike two on her abacus of failure, taking on a martyred look that Seth found very annoying.

Sister Roberta tried to stay out of Lily's way for a few weeks until the youngster admitted that there was some merit to the spinning out of orbit doomsday scenario. She wasn't worried about herself, of course, but she didn't want to disturb the strange three body motion with her presence and resigned herself to 'wonder at light' from a distance.

Far out in the skies Squiggle continued its strange lacy dance around its two suns, oblivious to the fact that a young ambitious woman sacrificed her dream to protect it.

"Why does it have to be a place with such precarious balance? There are plenty of planets in the universe, I'm sure we'll find you a better one, one where we can send you without worrying about your safety," the sister justified herself to Lily.

"I wonder what qualifications you'd need for that blessed place? I'm sure at this point sending me to Earth sounds unreasonably dangerous to you!" the latter protested.

"Well, the higher gravity might put undue stress on your system," the sister started debating, but stopped when she encountered the young woman's appalled gaze. "I'll find you a new planet, I promise. One with air and life and without potential for spinning out of orbit."

***

And she did. Not one but countless, a marvel of strange and wondrous planets, hazy planets with deep oceans, worlds with overlapping skies, green worlds set in perpetual twilight, worlds of ice inhabited by transparent creatures, worlds locked in twin revolution, spinning around each other like a strange time piece mechanism as they moved around their sun. She found worlds with life, worlds without life, intelligent worlds, worlds whose civilizations were sadly long gone. She found star system after star system, some with multiple habitable planets. She found rocky worlds like Terra Two and worlds veiled in the mystery of perpetual mist.

Lily visited them one by one, charting and discovering, not noticing the passing of years, for after all what would be the point of living a very long life if you have to skimp on experiencing it? As she explored the depths of space farther and farther from home the universe kept unfolding in front of her eyes, significantly the same, as if God wanted to clarify for her the concept of infinity.

With every trip she went farther into deep space but the end of the universe was nowhere in sight, and neither was her dream of finding out what lay beyond.

"Maybe it doesn't have an end," sister Roberta proposed.

"It might not have an end but it surely had a beginning, I should at least be able to see past that point," Lily argued.

"See where? Into the source singularity?" Roberta commented, shocked.

"It can't be infinite. Maybe we're already seeing other universes and don't realize it," Lily postulated.

"You don't make any sense. If you see them, they are in this universe, what, you're going to place a line and decide from here on it's another universe?" the sister retorted.

"It's just that I always expected there to be an outside. There can't be an inside without an outside!" she protested. "And while we're at it, I'll believe existence sprung out of nothing before I picture the entire universe squeezed into a dot!" Lily continued, peeved.

Roberta saw her frustration but didn't know how to comfort her. It was an unexpected turn of events for the engineering mastermind that for once it wasn't human limitations that prevented her from breaking through the secrets of the universe but the nature of existence itself.

"How do you know we're seeing real galaxies? Maybe we're looking at a reflection of our own back yard?" Lily offered.

"Oh, no, they're real," Roberta sighed.

"There's got to be an outside!" the young woman stubbornly insisted.

"Why don't we ask Purple? They're bound to know something," the sister tried.

"Like the gamma dark conversation was an eye opener!" Lily mumbled. "Even if they do know and want to explain, what makes you think we'll be able to understand?"

_"Giants. Think. Cosmos. Big. Ball."_ the immortals giggled. Sometimes they really irritated Roberta with their childish mischief, but the sister demonstrated superior self-control this time and asked them very nicely for details.

_"Giant. Always. Same. Place."_ the immortals obliged, confirming Lily's theory about the limitations of the human mind to comprehend. _"Outside. Different. Place."_

"You mean it's not possible for us to go outside?" Lily asked sorrowful.

_"Possible."_ the immortals answered laconically, then returned to complete silence.

***

"What do you think they meant?" sister Roberta asked Seth and sister Benedict who had been summoned for a nature of the universe brainstorming session.

"I don't know, maybe we're on the inside surface of a closed object," Seth suggested.

"They specifically mentioned it's not round," sister Benedict theorized.

"It doesn't have to be round. Maybe it's a Klein bottle, or a pseudo sphere, or some type of squiggle generated surface of revolution," sister Roberta proposed.

"Do you have any scientific basis to back up this theory?" Seth asked unimpressed.

"No, just trying to figure out what Purple meant," Roberta sheepishly admitted.

"Purple likes riddles, I wouldn't take their words literally," sister Benedict intervened. "We have to start with the unquestionable information, like the fact that we're inside a closed system, and pay attention to the comment that we are not actually moving from our place, whatever that means for Purple. In fact, this is where I would start: in what way are we not moving from our place? If we perceive that we are moving through an environment but do not in fact move at all, either the environment is moving around us or it is continuously changing shape, thus giving us the illusion of motion."

"We didn't consider the possibility that Purple is making fun of us," Roberta hesitated.

"They haven't told us something untrue yet, until that time comes I think we should take their remarks seriously," sister Benedict replied, unperturbed. _"Can anybody think of other ways in which we may think we're moving when in fact we are not?"_ she looked around curiously, relaying the question through the interlink at the same time, to ask the question publicly.

_"Maybe we're spinning,"_ Jimmy offered.

_"That's movement,"_ sister Benedict corrected him.

_"But not moving from location,"_ Jimmy clarified.

_"That's a possibility,"_ sister Benedict admitted. _"What else?"_

_"You know those scenes where you move through a door and end up in the same room?"_ Jimmy continued.

_"That's a Klein bottle,"_ sister Benedict pointed out.

_"Not necessarily,"_ Jimmy insisted. _"It can be as simple as moving through a torus with a dividing wall."_

_"If we define 'same place' broader, as in 'room' or 'site'."_ sister Benedict agreed. _"So, basically most of the options could be simply summed up as 'going around in circles'?"_ she reformulated the premise. _"Then maybe the problem becomes the fact that we attempt to move through the four dimensions,"_ she continued thinking out loud.

_"You go ahead and move through the fifth dimension and let us all know how it went!"_ sister Joseph couldn't help herself. The sister had just returned from Soléa and had switched her bracelet on right in the middle of what sounded like a completely absurd conversation made even worse by the fact that her input wasn't requested.

_"I don't think so, sister,"_ Sarah ignored sister Joseph's comment and replied to sister Benedict's train of thought. _"Purple said it was possible for us to go outside, remember?"_

Chapter Twenty Five

### Of Reality

While the science team debated the meaning of existence, life on Terra Two unfolded fervently, unaware of the planet's not changing location and enjoying the appearance of moving in all directions.

Sister Joseph spared no effort to spoil Josephine in every way imaginable by adapting Soléa 'vegetation' everywhere she found an empty spot. Unfortunately the plant-animals depended on the wind to bring nutrient rich moisture from the fresh water seas and the rarefied salty and sulfurous breeze didn't suit them at all. The chagrined sister Joseph, worried that her pet will receive less than the very best, used every means of manipulation she could come up with, from cajoling, to guilt trips, to straight intimidation to persuade Sarah to cultivate a successful alien ecosystem.

Sarah gave in eventually, despite the fact that her schedule was already overflowing and Josephine's behavior hadn't improved in any way that would ingratiate her with the redhead, more in the hope that she will finally be left in peace than for any other reason. A combination of miracle work, guesswork and knowledge of biology eventually yielded an environment more or less in equilibrium, even though the equilibrium was maintained at the expense of hard labor and excessive energy consumption.

Sister Joseph didn't care about the splurge on resources, she liked to point out on occasion that Josephine was the one good thing that happened to her since she had the misfortune to associate with their group of ne'er-do-wells and if everyone had to put a dent in their self indulgence to make her pet's life tolerable she considered it a small price to pay.

Everybody liked Josephine, how could one not? The shiny miniature dragon had become the community's good luck charm and local celebrity. No self-respecting visitor would dream of leaving Terra Two without seeing the alien lizard and the children adored her. Sarah had resigned herself to replant the ransacked flower and vegetable beds and sometimes sneaked fresh kale to Josephine against the specific instructions of her owner. Sister Joseph had concluded that an earthly diet didn't agree with her beloved pet and the dragon should only be fed according to the environment her species evolved in.

Sarah made great efforts not to crack a smile through repeated lectures about Josephine's sensitive temperament and stomachs, and tried to chase from her mind the vivid images of vegetable, herb and flower beds looking like the surface of the moon after the dragon was done with them. Sometimes, despite her better angels, Sarah hoped that the eating machine would actually find something that didn't agree with her stomachs, but due to the wondrous miracle of evolution Josephine was genetically programmed to eat molten lava without side effects.

As far as Josephine's delicate nature was concerned, Sarah didn't know if the dragon's feelings were hurt when she tried to shoo it away from the cauliflower, but the lizard was adamant about holding its ground and every territorial disagreement was dutifully marked in scratches on the redhead's skin.

The institute resembled a madhouse at times, with hordes of children chasing Josephine or the cats through the hallways, among moving carts with experiments in progress, visiting scholars trying to find their lecture halls and the occasional bird or bat escaped from one of the aviaries.

Sys had finished a large symphonic piece (a musical narrative about the songs of the ocean that Purple found absolutely delightful) and was making feverish preparations for the opening night.

Busy with their daily routine the sisters forgot about Lily. Since she had been travelling a lot lately everybody assumed she was traipsing across the galaxy charting one planet or another when in fact she had taken to the wilderness of Soléa of all places to spend some time in thought trying to figure out how it was possible for them to travel thousands of light years while remaining in the same place. Purple was its most obnoxious self, thrilled to challenge the young woman with this impossible logical puzzle and utterly amused by the series of wrong assumptions poor Lily threw at the problem.

"Purple. Love. Soléa. Dragon. Sister." the immortals broke the silence. Under the vast skies of the blue planet, their whisper reverberated against the rocks and startled Lily, as she stood still as a statue in the middle of a circle of dragons.

"Is here and home the same place?" Lily asked, irked.

"Place. No. Different. State. Different." Purple said, nonchalantly.

"State of what?" Lily startled.

"Flux." the immortals answered, and then started jabbering like a broken record, trying to entice the dragons to communicate. The dragons ignored the chatter box, idly eyeing the moving pastures for larger and more appetizing delicacies.

"Care to elaborate on that?" Lily lost her patience.

"Why. Not. Fall. Through. Ice." Purple asked.

"Because it's solid," Lily replied.

"Fall. Through. Water." Purple continued.

"Yes," Lily said, tentatively.

"State. Different." Purple replied, displeased. Purple were quirky beings; one moment they were in awe of human beings' taste buds and the dragons' ability to fly and the next they became filled with disdain for the humans' inability to process concepts of quantum physics so advanced the latter didn't even know existed, not to mention try to understand them. The fact that Lily had difficulty grasping the phenomenon of the universe moving through her and not her moving through the universe annoyed them greatly and they secretly decided the dragons might make better candidates for the advanced research team.

"They are not advanced enough for thinking and language!" Lily babbled, confused at Purple's insistence to communicate with the scratchy lizards.

"Giant. Not. Advanced. Enough. Either." Purple threw the words back at her bluntly. They didn't go for the sparing of feelings either. Lily took the high road and abandoned the argument. She tried to divert the conversation to more flattering subjects so she could let Purple show off.

"Have you ever been outside the universe?" she asked.

"No. Outside. Different. State." Purple blurted, exasperated.

"Have you?" Lily insisted.

"Yes." Purple answered. Lily expected them to continue but they didn't, they just started humming a gentle lull. The dragon closest to them half-closed its eyes, looking very pleased, and started performing a weird dance with its graceful necks.

"And?!" Lily couldn't believe their disinterest. "What was it like?"

"Bright." Purple replied after what seemed like a very long pause. "Much. Bright. All. Same." they continued, with a tinge of sadness, guilt and longing that made Lily wonder what happened to them out there to make them so uncomfortable even talking about it. "Purple. Back. Different. Universe." they said, almost in a whisper. "Old. Universe. Better."

Lily felt a little hurt that Purple preferred the universe without her, but swallowed her bruised feelings to find out more.

"What was the old one like? Why did you like it better?" she said.

"No. Dark. Yuck. Gamma. Scramble." they said, in an even quieter whisper, and Lily got a little insight into the guilty aspect of their feelings.

"Did you make that happen when you jumped out? The dark matter?" Lily continued her interrogation, mercilessly. Purple pondered for a while, deep in thought.

"No." they concluded. "Different. Universe."

"So you couldn't find your way back home?" Lily said gently, saddened about the loneliness and tribulations of the lost immortal travelers.

"Everywhere. Home. Every. Universe. Purple." they replied flatly.

***

Lily was so excited to find out so much information about her obsessive subject of study that she didn't pause to ask herself the obvious questions: why did they have to go all the way to Soléa for Purple to share these insights with her, how was flux involved in the properties of matter, or why did the immortals think it was possible for her to go outside if she had to change the living structure of her being in order to do it.

For the life of her she didn't want to throw herself into the endless sea of hypotheses and debates regarding the shape of the universe and its absence of movement. She was certain she would never understand the concepts and frankly didn't want to, because she didn't want to have to rebuild existence from scratch, so to speak, when there was a perfectly good and coherent context with structure and reliable physical laws already available to her.

Sister Roberta on the other hand threw herself at the problem with gusto, commenting that the young woman's unwillingness to accept a radical change in her understanding of being was as narrow minded as insisting that the Earth was flat, or curing fevers by bloodletting. The sister pestered poor Lily endlessly, trying to squeeze out more details out of her non-cooperating mind, so thrilled to have a new and vast subject for research that she almost burst out of her skin.

"Don't you want to keep any semblance of normality in your life? Why can't I accept things as I perceive them?" Lily tried to protest.

"You want old-fashioned?" sister Roberta jumped, revolted. "How old are you? One forty? One forty five? You should be dead!"

"But..." the youngster attempted a reply.

"No buts!" the sister ended the conversation. "If you're going to the institute can you ask Sys to recycle my holo lasers? They started to lose accuracy."

***

Lily was a curious person, not an adventurer. Once clear on the nature of 'outside' her scientific interest was quenched and she was perfectly satisfied with her treks across multiple galaxies, even if she knew all of them occupied the same place.

"Same difference!" she figured, and decided to leave the questions regarding the meaning of existence to people more metaphysically inclined.

The fine irony of the matter is that Lily had dedicated a large portion of her young life to the study of epistemology, trying to find reason, order and coherence in her environment and culture. Sister Joseph didn't miss a perfect opportunity to ask what good did it do her to know that everything she thought she knew about life was wrong. The sister concluded that Lily was steered in the wrong direction by crazies the likes of Roberta, that talking to Purple was a mistake and she had said so in the very beginning, and that every one of them was going to lose their God loving mind in the madness that would become their existence. She decried the demise of modesty as well as other true values and expressed her desire to run to the mountains and leave all this soulless and artificial life behind.

While engaged in this discourse on the virtues of simplicity and self-denial the sister was feeding Josephine freshly cut up morsels from an Oma tree's succulent foliage. The tree had been transported from Soléa in a specially designed container, calibrated to maintain the perfect levels of humidity and atmospheric gases, so that the taste of the foliage would not be altered. Upon its arrival to Terra Two Sarah and a small group of horticultural engineers spent an entire month to ensure the tree was perfectly adjusted to its new environment.

"What was wrong with living a simple life?" sister Joseph asked rhetorically. "You wake up in the morning, do your work the best you can and sleep soundly at night! No good ever came from listening to all that Purple nonsense!"

Josephine signaled that she was full, so sister Joseph got up, dragon on her shoulder, and followed Lily along the corridors of the institute. They found a magic carpet and moved quickly three floors up through the open atrium, then turned left and landed on one of the catwalk gardens on top of the aviaries.

Since the institute had grown to five times the size of its early design concept, the construction team had decided that a building this large needed means of internal transportation, so they threw in the magic carpets as an afterthought because they were the easiest way to solve the problem. Sister Joseph mockingly called them 'magic carpets' and the name stuck, but they looked more like little square baskets that could transport one or two people at a time, moved freely in every direction and could turn on a dime. They were tied into the interlink system, so that one didn't need to tell them where to go. This feature was welcomed with great enthusiasm by the sisters until the children started playing with them, going in two at a time and giving the poor carpets contradicting directions which made them move in chaotic beelines, like drunk robots.

"Leave it to the little fiends to find a way to mess this up! I blame the parents, you know!" sister Joseph complained out loud, secretly amused by the endless ingenuity of the youngsters.

The sister and Lily walked above a racket of birds and tree frogs while Josephine decided to stretch her wings a little bit and flew majestically over the open spaces to the delight of children and picture takers.

Sister Joseph went about her morning observation, making sure the animals were healthy and well cared for and noting changed in their mood or general behavior, while Lily was tagging along, not really sure why.

"What does Seth have to say about all of this?" sister Joseph asked all of a sudden.

"Nothing much," Lily remembered her mentor's reaction. Seth had listened to the young woman's account of the conversation with the immortals, noted that if they spoke Purple instead of human short hand the explanation would have been a lot more nuanced and maybe clearer, then she suggested that Sys could serve as an intermediary, as originally designed and sent Lily to Roberta to unravel the mysteries of space and travel. If one didn't know any better, one could have thought that Seth was trying to brush off her mentee and this theory of space in flux was of little interest to her. In reality she was just as ill at ease with having her reality turned upside down as Lily was.

Chapter Twenty Six

### Of Flux

Jimmy and Jenna were expecting and the wonderful news sent waves of excitement through the vast universe, or if you subscribed to Purple's theory of everything, realigned the threads of existence to create a slightly revised tapestry.

Sys left for Soléa immediately, to see its childhood friends and congratulate them on the blessed event. Once there um started generating toys, clothes and baby paraphernalia, playpens, playgrounds, food warmers, Purple music gadgets, and a series of virtual reality environments that covered every fairytale and every nursery rhyme ever written.

Jenna, who was still in her first trimester, looked dumbfounded at the ever flowing fountain of baby stuff, unable to react and starting to wonder exactly how much her life was going to change. She was carrying a baby girl, fact that had been brought to her attention by the immortals before she had an opportunity to ponder whether she wanted to know or not; Purple was more of a blabber mouth than usual and volunteered the information without being asked, compliments of a quick DNA analysis they performed instantly on contact with her skin.

"Purple. Love. Girl. Baby. Sister." they kept squeaking and chattering in excitement and making so much noise the dragons that safeguarded their perimeter started fussing uncomfortably.

Lily arrived a few weeks later, as soon as she learned the news upon returning from one of her trips. When she reached Soléa she found Sys working on a little amusement park, age appropriate of course.

Lily hadn't been with her friends in a while and found it a little strange to see them as a couple, with a baby on the way, no less. It had always been more or less obvious that Jimmy and Jenna were entwined souls and they had to end up together sooner or later. Due to the very long span of their lives child bearing age had slid significantly, and one hundred and forty nine, the age Jenna was at the time, was way too young for motherhood if you listened to her parents.

The sisters found every unrelated reason their imaginative minds could conceive to visit Soléa and hang around Jenna like overprotective mother hens: Sarah supposedly harvested 'vegetation' to replace the crops devoured by the ravenous Josephine, Roberta needed to improve the calibration of the solenoid, sister Novis found exploring the caves of the blue planet fascinating, sister Benedict had regular meetings with the research team of Antares Corde, and last, but not least, sister Joseph was there to "make sure Purple didn't harass the dragons with their obsessive humming", despite the fact that the dragons were soothed to the point of bliss by the immortals' strange music.

Lily was happy to find her friends so well adjusted to the deep skied planet, even if for a relatively brief research mission, and tried to ignore the eerie call of the wind that brought back memories of old angst. The dragons welcomed her and resumed their unofficial sentry duty as if she never left.

Jimmy and Jenna were thrilled to see her and listened long into the night to the stories she told them, stories of far out star clusters, galaxies and nebulas, stories of alien lives, so very different from their own, of green suns and amber oceans, of the things beyond the boundaries of existence. They listened to their friend as they watched the little camp fire cast a wild glow on her chocolate skin and light the shadow around her face, bringing her nearer and making her look more vibrant. The assurance with which she described her acquaintance with beings from across galaxies, beings they had never met and never knew existed put them ill at ease, almost as if someone had molded their childhood friend into this almost alien being, significantly the same but with no shared history.

Lily herself didn't realize how much she had changed, and neither Seth, nor Roberta, the sisters she spent most of her time with while on Terra Two, had the kind of temperaments given to psychoanalysis, so they just noticed how different she was now, but never mentioned it to her. There was something about her, something they couldn't put their finger on, that instinctively told them she felt more at ease traveling among the stars than at home.

The young woman looked even stranger since she had returned from her last trip to the Orion nebula. She had found a planet there, a habitable planet, a strange labyrinth of dizzyingly tall stone spires, where one could skip step from steeple to steeple over the deep chasms whose bottoms often got lost in the mist.

Due to the low gravity she could jump from stone top to stone top floating in the dense atmosphere with the grace of a butterfly. The air was so thick that she could propel herself by flopping her arms, not far enough to fly, but the arm movements certainly gave her enough impulse to glide over the wide open spaces between the stones.

She told no one about this dare devil activity, of course, she couldn't even imagine what her parents would say about it, and the sisters still intimidated her enough to keep the distance, she still saw them through the eyes of her seven year old self, and she sometimes found herself reduced to squirming uncomfortably in her chair in Organic Chemistry class.

When she jumped, the mist moved with her, pulled by the vacuum she left behind, folding and spreading as if animated by an inner force. Sometimes thick clouds almost covered the stones, revealing and concealing them with swift movements, as if the mist were daring Lily to jump from stone to stone across the deep, sight unseen. Here and there in the heavy fog diffuse lightning glowed, lighting entire clouds from behind like giant lamp shades.

Lily didn't know if it were the fact that she could 'fly' on this planet, or the warm, familiar feeling she had when the mist surrounded her, or if the peaceful swish of the ocean lapping against the pebbly beach reminded her of her childhood, but she was happy on her planet with no name, a planet that didn't appear on any stellar charts, that wasn't even supposed to be there, according to the laws of physics. It just floated in the middle of nowhere at the intersection of three very large gravitational fields of far away stellar clusters, its sky studded by numerous tiny suns that continuously went up over the horizon, casting a familiar rosy glow on everything.

Sometimes she thought she could see shapes in the mist, and she worried she might be hallucinating, and the next moment the mist lifted and she found herself bathed in the peachy light of the perpetual sunrise.

She didn't know why that was, but the longer she stayed on 'her' planet, the less she wanted to leave it, and she put off one research assignment after another to sneak out to one of its secluded beaches and watch the suns rise for a few hours. Wisps of mist danced above the surface of the water, glowing diffusely with electric charges and then settled at her feet, laying on the pebbles of the beach like strange amorphous creatures.

***

She liked to keep her little weird paradise all to herself and she only mentioned it to Purple because she knew the immortals were always thrilled to experience unfamiliar places.

"Purple. Go. Nameless. Planet." they whined. "Lily. Must. Take. Purple."

Lily gave in eventually, for the sake of peace and quiet, and took the immortals with her to the planet against her better judgment. Purple was strangely quiet during the visit, and only started talking her ears off after they got back to Terra Two.

"Why. Lily. Visit. Wisps." Purple asked, with a tinge of jealousy in its breathy voice.

"What? Do you mean the fog?" Lily asked, doubtful.

"No. Fog. Wisps. Haughty. Purple. Talk." Purple continued. "Wisps. Like. Lily. Wisps. No. Like. Any. Body."

"What in blazes are you talking about? It's just water vapor!" Lily blurted louder than she would have liked.

"Giant. Slow. No. Vapor. Wisps." the immortals continued, stubbornly. "Wisps. Not. Solids. Wisps. Think. Solids. Dense." Lily took a moment to remember how many times Purple told her she was slow and couldn't help enjoying a little bit the fact that the shoe was on the other foot for a change. Microscopic they might have been, but the immortals were still solid after all.

"Why. Lily. Visit. Wisps. Deceitful. Bad." Purple ominously threw everything but the kitchen sink into the warning. "Wisps. No. Like. Solids. Why. Wisps. Charm. Lily."

"You talked? What did they say?!" Lily asked, overexcited.

"Lily. Like. Rock. Lily. Solid. Rock. Solid." the immortals mumbled, peeved at her curiosity.

"You mean they said I was dumb as a rock? I thought you said they liked me!" Lily couldn't help laughing.

"No. Reason. Talk. Wisps. Talk. Purple. Lily. Sister." Purple continued defensively, more stubborn than ever.

There wasn't a dash of hope that once the chatterbox grasped on a subject it would not be broadcast into the entire community to friends and strangers alike, via interlink, so the whole population of Terra Two was briefed on the existence of the unnamed planet, its gaseous beings and their disdain for solid matter. Everybody acknowledged the new species and discarded the news the same evening, together with the morning weather forecast and the traffic reports.

***

Lily decided to do something she hadn't done in a long time: she took a shortcut through Sarah's office, cut through the healing garden and headed towards the Prayer Hall. She strolled in, alone, listening to the echoes of her footsteps reverberating between the stone floors and the arched vaults. She skipped the walk to the main hall, however, and made a turn towards the back corridor that lead through the refectory into the kitchen.

Sarah and Mary Francis were seated at the long wooden table, their backs to the door, laying down medicinal plants to dry on large mesh frames. The entire kitchen smelled like a meadow baking in the sunshine.

"Why are you doing this in the kitchen? There are thirty seven drying rooms at the Institute, with controlled moisture and temperature levels!" Lily couldn't help herself.

"Oh, I like doing this the old fashioned way every now and then, it reminds me of Perpignan," Sarah sighed imperceptibly, exchanging a glance with sister Mary Francis who answered with a small grin filled with longing.

"What's Perpignan?" Lily asked innocently, stirring a growl of disapproval from the sisters.

"Young people! It figures!" sister Mary Francis said, slighted.

"What brings you here, darling? We haven't seen you in a long time?" asked sister Jove, who had just entered the kitchen.

Lily hesitated before answering, trying to take in the familiar sights and sounds while her lungs were filled with the intense aroma of the wilting herbs.

"I missed you, I thought someone would be here," she avoided the answer, smiling at the sisters with the childhood smile they knew so well. All their uneasiness melted in that soft sunny smile and sister Mary Francis forgot for a moment that the young woman was approaching one hundred and fifty and stepped quickly to the pantry to bring out the honey chamomile cakes they'd baked earlier, which were Lily's favorites.

Her former pupil's uneasiness didn't escape Sarah's keen eye. She shooed Solomon, who had jumped on the table to sniff the fish fillets the sisters were preparing for dinner, and tried to dig deeper into Lily's thoughts, unnoticed.

"Did you have a pleasant trip?" the redhead tried to entice the young woman into an open conversation.

"Yes, thank you for asking," the latter didn't engage, but instead picked up Solomon and put him on her lap. The cat half closed its eyes, purring with delight, and settled down for a nap. The sky turned on several rain showers and the water condensate dropped like waterfalls over the thirsty herb garden. One of the jumping rocks split and sprung itself a twin of a different color and transparency. Lily wondered suddenly how she could have forgotten the absolute peace that lived between these walls, the safest place in the universe, as far as she knew: a stronghold of glass, protected by unconditional love. She got up slowly, to Solomon's displeasure, and walked to the doorway that lead into the kitchen garden, followed by the herb fragrance and the monotonous hum of the mundane conversation. She stood there, in that doorway, watching the rain fall on the brick colored soil and turn it deep ruby and burgundy, the colors of wine. Jumping rocks popped every now and then, like popcorn in a heated kettle.

"Purple told us about your beautiful planet," Sarah started tentatively, making Lily a little uncomfortable.

_"Of course they did, the blabbermouths, I bet they spilled like a broken pitcher! You can't keep anything to yourself on this darned planet!"_ Lily thought, growing more upset by the minute. Sarah heard her thoughts, but curiosity was stronger than her usual discretion.

"I heard you found a new life form!" she continued, cheerfully. "That's exciting!"

_"Call the presses and let's have a party!"_ sister Joseph replied sarcastically. _"I can't wait to communicate with smoke signals and make quick friends with fog. Who forgot to water the Soléa vegetation? Poor Josephine is starving, you nincompoops!"_ The sisters in the kitchen collectively rolled their eyes.

_"I felt that! What does a person need to do around here to earn some respect!"_ sister Joseph reacted, offended.

"Yes," Lily responded wistfully. She wished she could express the bond she felt for that new planet, a bond impossible to describe in words, the joy she experienced when she was flying, the thousand lights of the perpetual sunrises, the warm caress of the mist that surrounded her ankles on the beach. Sarah saw her thoughts and smiled.

"What a beautiful place!" the redhead marveled. "Have you thought about a name?"

Lily was still peeved about Purple's blabbing. The reason she kept her planet unnamed was because she wanted it to be her private realm, a place far from prying eyes and well worded opinions, but now that the cat was out of the bag it hardly seemed necessary anymore.

_"Why do people expect me to name every new celestial body we come upon?"_ she wondered to herself, quietly irate.

_"I'll name it for you in a jiffy! How about Murky Pits?"_ sister Joseph picked up her cheeky tone and ran with it. _"Or Hazy Brains, that would work too!"_

"I'll think about it," Lily said out loud, suddenly aware of the horrid repercussions the naming delay could have on her beloved planet.

_"Planet. Name. Already."_ Purple intervened, without being asked. _"Wisps. Name. Planet."_ and they didn't continue, to Lily's annoyance.

_"Named it what?"_ the latter asked eventually.

_"Vlor."_ the immortals obliged. _"Means. Reason."_

Chapter Twenty Seven

### Of Immortality

"What do you think about Lily and her planet of reason?" Seth asked, startling Sarah, as usual. The redhead was in her herbalist shop, cataloguing DNA sequences, and the leader had approached unnoticed as usual.

"Ethereal," Sarah half smiled.

"Rational vapor, that's unexpected," Seth continued, trying to suppress a grin.

"From what I understand, they think we're a lower form of being, solid as we are. You know, we could fill entire galaxies with the details Purple doesn't feel a need to share with us! How long do you think they knew about the wisps?" Sarah commented.

"If only our scientific curiosity were keener!" Seth retorted.

"Any suggestions about things we should consider asking them? The path of human evolution? The essence of the divine? Retrocausality?" Sarah continued her speculation. "How many species do you think they could have facilitated an encounter with so far?" she exclaimed.

"If only we had bothered to ask!" Seth finished her thought.

"How can they even understand each other? It took us decades to develop a common language!" the redhead exclaimed.

"That's between a microscopic life form and a gaseous one. Apparently they both think we're slow," Seth spoke, and the crease between her eyebrows deepened.

Sarah turned off the VR projector and the DNA slides melted in thin air. Throughout their long lives all the achievements that brought them honor and praise from scientific peers, every feat that stretched human limitations paled in comparison to the knowledge Purple held, a knowledge that was so natural to them it didn't even feed their vanity. She felt dejected sometimes, she felt like she was constantly reinventing the wheel while civilization moved on, centuries ahead.

She saw herself through Purple's perspective, no smarter than a beloved pet, or maybe an interesting and colorful culture of bacteria, a likeable being whose limitations didn't allow higher reasoning capacities. Seth read her thoughts and frowned.

"I don't think anybody expects us to alter the fundamental nature of our species!" she claimed.

_"Sarah. Sister. Sarah. Purple. No. Pet. Sister."_ the immortals intervened in the conversation.

"Lucky you, apparently I'm the only pet in the room," Seth joked bitterly.

"That's not true," Sarah replied calmly, looking up. From the rafters the feline pioneers of animal life on Terra Two and several generations of their fragrant descendents were staring them down with curious round eyes that occasionally picked up an eerie glow in the dim light of the sunset.

"Don't forget to commune with your other two sisters, the cat and the bean tree, oh, thee highly evolved being," Seth smirked on her way out.

***

Despite the sarcasm, spending some time in thought under the bean tree sounded like a pretty good idea to Sarah, so she picked up Solomon from under one of the tables and made her way through the lush landscape, her footsteps muffled by the silty soil.

She waited there for the evening prayers, watching the lights turn on one by one at the approach of evening, watching shuttles pass overhead, punctual like clockwork on their way to Airydew. She listened to the giggles and shouts of the little ones chasing each other on the beach, she took in the perfume of overheated gardenias and vanilla blossoms, carried in the breeze.

The sky darkened, a perfect background for the metal stars and the shimmery belt of the particle accelerator. How many things they had made, practical things to improve their lives, they never thought of them as being beautiful, but they were.

Somewhere in the northeastern quarter of the firmament, behind the constellation of methane containers, the Heart of Scorpius shone bright orange, casting its light on dragons and humans alike. In the depths of the ocean the Purple cities were coming alive with their inner glow, forming intricate tapestries of thought and emotion, gigantic interconnected brains exchanging information through the currents.

Sarah's peaceful reverie was abruptly shattered by Josephine's blood curdling screeches followed by sister Joseph's incensed shouting.

"This is unbelievable, I trust your useless lot for one second and this is the thanks I get! If anything happens to Josephine, heaven help you, you miserable..." the sister deployed the heavy artillery on a frazzled cat who was staring up a tree, hissing. Inside said tree was a screeching Josephine who had caught her wings in the branches and was struggling to escape. With each struggle her bind tightened, increasing the dragon's distress.

"So much for peace and quiet," Sarah thought, and got up to join the large group of sisters who had gathered around the tree to offer assistance. The offending cat, overwhelmed by the commotion, ran away at the first opportunity, seeking shelter under a soybean bush to watch the hubbub from there.

Sister Joseph managed to untangle Josephine at the cost of plentiful scratches, and

tried to quiet down the dragon with little chunks of greenery that the latter gulped down enthusiastically, like they were its last meal.

Sarah looked at the ravaged aloe vera patch, sighed with resignation, but said nothing, not wanting to add gasoline to the fire. Apparently the conflict had started earlier in the vicinity of said patch and resolved itself in the tree, followed by the dreadful noise.

Josephine had finally calmed down and was walking behind sister Joseph, wobbling proudly, her stomach so full it could burst. It occurred to Sarah for a second that from behind she looked like a five headed blue goose, only noisier.

As the commotion subsided, a little glimmer caught the redhead's eye. At first she thought it was the setting sun shining against one of the jumping rocks, but the more she looked the more she noticed that the shimmer increased, like a little light. She approached the flower bed to see it up close and the little light moved fast into the depths of the tropical forest and disappeared from sight in what looked like a little puff of smoke. In the place where it first appeared Sarah found a little metallic box with no decoration but that seemed designed to completely seal the contents from the external environment.

The box had nothing inside, except for a beautifully crafted cat collar with a tiny metal shard cast in amber dangling from it. Sarah's mind made the obvious connection to Lily's Persian, Amber, but the thought that Lily would consider making her cat a gem encrusted collar felt completely absurd. She took a closer look at the place where she found the box, a little mound of jumping rocks still glowing with excitation because of the light.

Sarah looked at the box again. Much like the collar, the craftsmanship was exquisite, perfect in every detail. The outside surface was polished to a mirror finish and resistant to scratches, smudges or discoloration. The inside had a matte satin finish with indentations so fine one couldn't tell them apart with the naked eye.

_"This is so beautiful!"_ Sarah thought, forgetting she had her bracelet on. Fortunately the sisters were busy preparing for the evening service, otherwise sister Joseph would have offered a snarky retort, but Lily was in the neighborhood and decided to see what was going on. When she arrived to the healing garden she found Sarah sitting on one of the stone benches in the shade of the pear trees and gazing in awe at the shimmery artifacts.

"Sister, aren't you late for Vespers? And what is that?" Lily's attention got diverted. Sarah put the box in her hands and rushed to the Prayer Hall, noticing that it was five past seven already and worried she was going to get a talking to for tardiness again.

Lily stood on the bench and studied the box for a while, then went home to feed Amber.

***

The next morning the cat was nowhere to be found and the box was empty. Since the first scenario, that the cat put its own collar on and skipped town didn't pass the rational thinking test Lily assumed her mother had stopped by, thought the collar was for Amber and let the cat out.

She took the box and went to Roberta's lab to figure out what it was made of. Roberta was working on an atmospheric humidity stabilizer, but she put her work aside for a little bit to indulge one of her favorite pupils.

"Tungsten carbide," she declared, unimpressed.

"You expected some never before encountered metal?" Lily asked.

"No. All matter comes from the same source, if the compound is stable in this environment, we've most likely seen it before," she commented. "What's interesting about it however is that can be hermetically sealed. Nothing going in, nothing coming out, a perfect transportation vessel. Way too many precautions for a cat collar. Where is it, by the way?"

"I don't know, my mother must have put it around Amber's neck and let her out. I haven't seen her today," Lily answered. As if summoned, Amber sneaked through the door left ajar and jumped on the counter to give Roberta a close look at the collar.

"Is your cat usually following you around?" Roberta said, engrossed in studying the little metal shard inside the amber. "This however is interesting!" she said. "The amber is sealing it from the atmosphere, otherwise it would have oxidized instantly, we couldn't see this in its natural form. Where did you get it?"

"Sarah found it in the healing garden yesterday, I don't know where it's coming from," Lily answered.

"It's pure potassium. Wherever this formed there was no oxidation, that's not easy to find on a planet with an oxygen atmosphere. The amber, on the other hand, can only come from a planet with an oxygen rich atmosphere. Interesting, isn't it?" she probed the young woman with a laser like gaze. "You know something about this, don't you?" she cut to the chase.

"I wish I did," Lily said, honestly.

"Spectacular craftsmanship!" Roberta couldn't take her eyes off the pendant hanging from the silvery collar, a perfectly shaped heptagon diffusing light in sun baked hues.

The following week Amber followed Lily around, not leaving her side for a moment, with the medallion still hanging around her neck. It would have been lost in her sumptuous ginger coat if it didn't capture the sunlight and then release it slowly, glowing from the inside.

***

"Are we still pondering the shape of the universe, or should we let Purple keep the mystery and dazzle us with its magnificence?" sister Roberta asked Lily a few days later, when the excitement over the new found box subsided.

"What is there to ponder? We're not really moving through time and space, the universe is closed but has no boundaries, we can get out in the overwhelming brightness by changing our state, and in the event that we do, we can't come back home! Sounds very discouraging to me," Lily summed up the unwelcome information.

"We still could figure out the shape, one thing we know is that it's not round," sister Roberta teased. "Besides, we could send a probe..." she suggested.

"To what end? We're going to lose it the second it passes the barrier of whatever it is that we can't get through! What do you think the odds are that another version of us has exactly the same idea and sends a probe that just happens to fall back in our lap?" she asked rhetorically.

_"1. 1349388266882668826688266882668826688266882668826688266882."_ Purple answered promptly.

"Wouldn't it be easier to just ask the immortals?" Lily burst, dejected.

"How interesting! Why finite? Why repeating?" Roberta went on a tangent and got lost in her scientific inner gazing, forgetting all about Lily and the shape of the universe.

Lily wanted to emphasize that the change of state seemed to be the crucial component for experiencing actual movement, but the sister was so absorbed by the new puzzle pieces that she wasn't listening.

"Why. Giants. Fret." the immortals asked kindly. "Giant. Not. Enough. Dimension. To. See." they tried to explain.

"You look pretty three dimensional to me!" sister Roberta shouted, beet red with embarrassment.

"Giant. See. Purple. Footprint." the immortals clarified.

"Why did you say we could do it then!?" Roberta continued her argument, flustered.

"Giant. Evolve." Purple said naturally.

"How many eons do you think it would take humans to develop extra dimensions!? You can't be serious!" Roberta gasped, shocked.

"Giant. Has. Time." Purple declared, insanely calm.

The conversation really shook Roberta to her core. She had aged reasonably well as she approached the big four hundred, but she never internalized what an infinite life span really meant. All her activities had followed their old patterns and she moved from one discovery to the next, like a hiker who manages her effort to reach the visible top of the hill, not knowing the hills behind it are increasingly taller and stretching endlessly. The discussion about events spanning billions of years put things in perspective for her and set her psyche in wretched panic.

Strangely enough, the only person who managed to bring her solace and restore normality was sister Joseph, who took time from her busy schedule to counsel Roberta and pointed out that if God didn't wish this wretched endless life within a body on them they'd still have to contend with an eternal life without one. She suggested that this experience would be a good opportunity for sister Roberta to contemplate the depths of her soul and ponder on ways to ensure it didn't end up in rather unpleasant surroundings, just in case the immortality bit didn't pan out and they still had to face judgment.

"Why do you think we haven't already!" sister Roberta cried out, wretchedly. "There is no requirement that we have to be dead!" Sister Joseph looked around, breathed in the intoxicating fragrance of vanilla and gardenias, and smiled.

"It looks like we lucked out, then."

Chapter Twenty Eight

### Of Love

Just as she approached her one hundred and sixtieth birthday, Lily met her soul mate. Her parents were quietly relieved and encouraged the youths to pursue this relationship in every way they could think of. Lily's boyfriend, Hamon, was a few decades younger than her, a shy and quiet man who had dedicated his life to literary pursuits, poetry in particular, a man who shared precious little about himself and didn't seem to be busy at any point in time.

From the moment he joined the Institute as a visiting scholar he sought Lily's company and followed her around with superhuman persistence. Everyone assumed he had come from Airydew, a fact he neither confirmed nor denied, but skillfully changed the subject every time it floated around the subject of his upbringing. The sisters were thrilled to see Lily happy, strangely matched as the young folks were; on second thought who other than a shy poet could thrive in the presence of the opinionated traveler with the personality of an five star general? Many of Lily's acquaintances wondered what she found in him, especially since he was significantly younger, and sister Joseph in particular had issues with the fact that they knew so little about the man and his apparent idleness was definitely something to be frowned upon.

The sister often mumbled under her breath that if she spent so much time on Terra Two, even from its very beginnings, and she hadn't heard anything about this fellow's family there was definitely something wrong with him. She even attempted veiled interrogation techniques to squeeze some more information out of the guy, but apparently he had a talent to gently guide the conversation away from whatever he didn't feel like sharing. The sister gave up eventually, shaking her head to express concern, and sighed loudly, the only commentary she felt was called for under the circumstances.

Lily wasn't sure what it was that made her long for Hamon's presence, a presence which she had started seeking with a frequency that worried both her and the sisters. The young man's energy brightened the most humble of rooms and places she had seen a million times seemed friendlier and more interesting when he was there. The reserved young man' physical beauty was almost surreal and a gentle light suffused his whole being, a light that almost made him glow, warmed Lily's soul and filled her with joy.

Seth suppressed a little smile when she saw the obstinate adventurer gloss over a beautiful vanilla orchid, or the spectacular Terra Two sunsets, as scientific papers went unwritten and the shape of the universe remained veiled in mystery.

Lily's parents, who had found out from the chatty immortals about their daughter's extreme sports on Vlor didn't know how to thank Hamon for distracting her and keeping her away from jumping over foggy chasms, even if his academic position wasn't as prestigious as they thought Lily deserved. Their daughter had always been a prodigy, top of her class, leader of her peers, head of the research team, and they always assumed she would marry somebody of the same scientific caliber. A poet! What a thought, they said to each other, but given the fact that their lovely daughter bossed around every human male that ever came her way they were pleased she found somebody she could match wits with.

Lily loved order, logic, reason, above all. She needed to know how and why things happened so she could classify them, find their place in the universe and their relationships with other things. She liked to take a logical argument and unravel it until she reached its core, so that she could find its true meaning and bring light and clarity unto the issue.

Hamon's gift of eloquence fascinated her, he could pick a subject she thought settled and with very few words reframe it in ways that opened whole new perspectives on it and made her wonder how she never saw it like that before.

They spent hours in silence at other times, sitting on the stairs of Lily's porch and watching the seagulls, the wild grasses advancing on the sandy beach, the smooth moves of the currents under the surface of the water. Hamon often looked lost in thought at these times, absentmindedly petting Amber, who was curled in his lap, and playing with the pendant hanging from its collar.

Pretty soon the two became inseparable, which comes to prove how fast one recognizes one's true love when it comes around, whether it comes too soon or rather late. If there was something she never doubted was that Hamon loved her, she could feel it in his voice when he spoke, she could see it in his eyes when he looked at her, as sure as the suns were in the sky.

She wanted to know more about him, obviously, his favorite foods, what music he preferred, stories from his childhood, but the conversation always diverted back to her and since she was a bit of a gossip she picked up the talk and ran with it, regaling him with stories about Sys and her magical hands, Purple music, her adventures among the stars, the games she played with her friends on the beach as a child, sister Roberta's innovative genius, Sarah's lovely realm of herbs and cats, sister Joseph and her always hungry dragon, anything and everything she could think of.

"You never tell me anything about yourself!" Lily told Hamon reproachfully, but he replied that he didn't want to talk about it and changed the subject. Lily's curiosity grew in time, only matched by her rising apprehension. She couldn't imagine any circumstance that would make childhood on Terra Two, no matter where, so bad that one didn't want to talk about it, she wondered if he had a falling out with his parents, or was fighting his way out of a major setback, and she ran one scenario after another in her head, her natural inquisitiveness fed by her need for things to neatly make sense. She started fearing that he was going to disappear into thin air one day, as suddenly as he arrived, and after that she would have to spend the rest of eternity combing the known universe from one end to the other trying to find him.

"Don't worry," he joked. "The universe is not that big."

***

"Lily. Like. Wisp." Purple said reproachfully.

"I do, if you say they're sentient. I haven't been to Vlor in months, though, thanks to your big mouth. Why did you have to tell my parents about the cliff jumping?" Lily retorted, still annoyed at the gossips.

"Why. Go. Planet." the immortals continued, with a tinge of jealousy in their voice.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Lily replied, puzzled.

"Lily. Dense." Purple grumbled, irate, and refused to continue the conversation.

***

Landing Day was fast approaching and several teams in Airydew were putting together spectacular festivities, the kind that everyone looked forward to for months. Lily was excited about the feast, of course, there was going to be Purple music and air shows, and as usual, sky painting and fireworks. They spent four days in the city, four days surrounded by music and the perpetual mists that inspired its name. They went to the top of the observation tower to see the garlands of islands strewn along highways and silver bridges, half concealed by the clouds, so beautiful they almost seemed unreal.

Hamon had a strangely sad look in his eyes, a look of undefined longing, and he breathed in the mists of Airydew as if they were a rare and precious fragrance. He was even quieter than usual, if that were possible, and gazed into the mist in search of something only he could see.

They took the barge back home, because the currents were faster than the shuttle, moving them at dizzying speed past the giant purple bowls of the immortal cities, cities visible even at that depth in the crystal clear water.

After their return Hamon got into the habit of waking up before dawn to drink his coffee on the porch and watch the ocean breeze move puffs of vapor over the water. He looked into the mist and the mist followed his gaze, painting arabesque patterns in the air and bending around boulders and trees with the grace of silk ribbons.

One morning Hamon walked into the mist and slowly disappeared from sight, and when the fog lifted there was no trace of him on the beach but a set of slowly dissipating footprints.

Lily woke up a few hours later and looked for him, assumed he already went to the Institute and went about her daily chores. She ran into sister Roberta, who asked her assistance with the tests for the environmental stabilizer, got engrossed in the work and lost track of time. Around seven, sister Roberta remembered she was late for Vespers and left in a hurry, and Lily decided to take the shortcut through the forest that led straight to her home. The fireflies were glowing in the tall grass, sparkling all around her and she didn't notice the little light that followed her, bouncing in her footsteps on purpose.

She reached the house and sat on the steps of her porch, watching absentmindedly as a little strip of fog moved playfully in the breeze, approaching slowly, hesitatingly. The wispy cloud reached her feet and disappeared, and the next second Lily felt Hamon sitting right next to her on the stairs. She gazed at him with a stare voided of all thought, still trying to process what happened. Hamon looked back at her tentatively, trying to find his words, and he eventually uttered,

"What? I missed home."

***

[UNIVERSAL TRANSLATION COPY]

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MESSAGE ORIGINATION: PLANET VLOR, THE ORION CONSTELLATION, 3RD QUADRANT

MESSAGE BROADCASTING FREQUENCIES: ALL

MESSAGE CHARACTER: PERSONAL

MESSAGE ENCRIPTION: PRIVACY STANDARD

MESSAGE ADDRESSEE: THE HUMON CLOUD, HONORARY HOST OF THE DOMINIONS, GERMINALS OF THE THIRD SPHERE, VALENT RANK FOUR

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

27th Gyration, Planetary Rotation 327, Third Revolutionary Cycle

The Tagas Cloud, Guardians of the Strongholds, Germinals of the Fourth Principality, Valent Rank Two

Vlor

The Orion Constellation

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Re: PERMISSION FOR SABBATICAL LEAVE

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To the Humon Cloud, Tagas Cloud's Secondary Inheritor, in Grace

The message of the Third Circle failed to reach you and was forwarded to our cloud in the hope we can shed more light on your whereabouts.

We know how committed you are to your sacred duties and grieve over the possibility the assembly might think a host of your rank delayed thanking the Circle for their consideration for an entire planet rotation. We attach their official letter to this message, in reference.

Your request for sabbatical leave submitted to the Third Circle on the 15th Gyration of Planetary Rotation 320 has been rejected. The Circle wisely and unanimously agreed that your continued presence in the polymorphic cloud can not be substituted.

We took the liberty to share what sparse knowledge we had of your present activities with our covalent clouds and your other progenitors. They are all sending their blessings and expressing concern over your prolonged out of contact status, especially at this critical time when you have passed the threshold of your thousandth planetary rotation and the Second Circle honoured you with a selection of covalences for your Bonding.

The Second Circle's message also failed to reach you, therefore we all thought that notifying the First Circle was for the best under the circumstances; this way we can all get the benefit of their wisdom. The second letter is also attached to this message, for your reference.

We rejected the incongruous rumors regarding your regression to solid state and your interaction with physical beings as what could only be the misinformed opinions of lesser ranks; we honor their progress and plead for their swift acquaintance with the more subtle formalities of our tradition. Surely a Host of the Dominion does not take physical form, as any germinal of the Third Circle knows, nor does it reveal itself to solids, a feat better left to the lower ranking clouds whom they have been privileged to lead and educate.

Our dedication as progenitors is unending and only matched by our appreciation for your superior status; your integration into the Dominions has provided humble gratification to us all and we anticipate that your ascendance into the Second Circle is forthcoming.

Eagerly awaiting a response, we look forward to sharing accounts of the duties we're certain you have been tirelessly carrying out with your other progenitors, in obedience to the Laws of Tradition and the sacred obligations of our standing.

Eternally devoted,

The Tagas Cloud, Principal Progenitors

_Attachment 1_ _: Re: PERMISSION FOR SABBATICAL LEAVE - THIRD CIRCLE POLYMORPHIC CLOUD, 13th Gyration, Planetary Rotation 327, Third Revolutionary Cycle_

_Attachment 2_ _: FINAL COVALENT CLOUD SELECTION - SECOND CIRCLE POLYMORPHIC CLOUD, 20th Gyration, Planetary Rotation 327, Third Revolutionary Cycle_

\- end of release -

***

### About the author

Visit Francis Rosenfeld's Blog at

www.francisrosenfeld.com

***

### Other books by Francis Rosenfeld

Discover other titles by this writer at Smashwords.com:

 https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/FrancisRosenfeld

### Terra Two

### Letters to Lelia

### Fair

### Door Number Eight

### The Plant – A Steampunk Story

***

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