Wisdom Beyond Her Years

By J-L Heylen

Have you ever dreamed of living your life over again?

Would you make different choices this time around? Would you the wisdom of hind-sight to make sure you didn’t make the same mistakes? Would you have more confidence, take more chances, love more, and live more? Would you die without regret?

When 67 year old Ariel Connolly participates in an experimental attempt to capture the brain functions and memories of 20 ordinary Australians in 2017, she honestly thinks nothing will come of it. She can hardly believe, in fact, that anyone would give good money to fund such research.

Three days after the scan, Ariel dies. As she passed, she thought that would be the end of the story.

So when Ariel wakes up 192 years later, in a new 19 year old body, in a post-apocalyptic underground city, her scepticism about the experiment isn’t the only thing she is forced to re-evaluate. She finds herself excited and confronted in equal measure, with hormones raging and a body that looks like it could do anything.
When she meets the charismatic and dangerous Carla, one of the most powerful women in New Sydney, Ariel learns just how much her new body is capable of.
But Ariel’s new body can’t change who she is and who she has always been. Through love, rebellion and betrayal, Ariel learns one timeless lesson – no matter how many times you get resurrected, you can’t escape from yourself.
Ariel has wisdom beyond her years, but all the wisdom in the world may not be enough to save her.

Please note: this book contains adult themes, occasional coarse language, and lesbian sex scenes

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Aug 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9780987255112

Book preview

Wisdom Beyond Her Years

by

J-L Heylen

Copyright © J-L Heylen 2012

MoshPit Publishing

Hazelbrook

an imprint of Mosher‘s Business Support Pty Ltd

Shop 1, 197 Great Western Highway, Hazelbrook NSW 2779

Website: http://www.moshpitpublishing.com.au

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Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

***

Every effort has been made to trace and acknowledge copyright. However, should any infringement have occurred, the publisher tenders its apology and invites any copyright owners to contact them.

Acknowledgements

My thanks go to my wonderful life partner, Lorna, for all her support while writing this book. Her sagacity and unequivocal confidence in my abilities was sometimes the only thing that kept me going. Also, thanks go to my mates Steve Neal and Kathleen MacDonald for the invaluable reminder that just because I’ve been living in this world for many years, nobody else has, so things still need to be explained.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to our beautiful ginger tabby boy, Tiggle, who frequently sat in my lap and commented on my style while writing. A careless driver took him from us the day I finished my final edits.

Good hunting, Tig.

Disclaimer

This novel is written in Australian English and Australian vernacular. It includes explicit sex scenes, strong language, adult themes and words used or spelt contrary to the expectations of some other users of English. The characters and events depicted are fictional. Any resemblance to real events or people is purely coincidental.

PROLOGUE

Ariel Ingrid Connolly, female, aged 67 years two months. Condition: Terminal (Metastatic Cancer). Expected date of expiry: 17/02/2017. Ethics approval code: 2016/4728SBE. Signatures for all experimental procedures received. No next of kin. Religion: none stated. Date of scan procedure: 14/02/2017.

Preservation Pod Allocation Code: POD_Connolly17121950.

Scan Storage File Name: SCAN_Connolly17121950.

Where there are no dreams, people perish

Proverbs 29:18

Chapter 1

What the fuck? were the first words that escaped Ariel Connolly’s mouth as she awoke for the first time after being 192 years dead.

Her words may have been more considered if she had really understood what was going on, but at that moment, all she knew was that she felt nothing like she could remember feeling just minutes before. At least, it seemed like just minutes, but all the external cues she remembered were wrong. She had been in a small room surrounded by lab techs, researchers and students. There had been so many people watching the procedure that there was barely enough room for Ariel to be wheeled in on her hospital gurney with her IV stand being trundled along beside her by a blue-clad orderly. Now, the IV was gone and Ariel was aware of bright lights, white walls, and reassuring voices that seemed to be speaking an odd accent of English that she had never heard before. Internally, she was aware that she ought not to be able to see, feel or hear anything at all. In short, she ought not to be alive, but clearly she was. She had not been thrilled about dying in the first place, so to find herself suddenly very much alive, and well enough for vigorous verbal outbursts, made her very happy indeed.

All the weakness and pain she had been suffering as a result of her cancer were gone.

Her surprised expletive had roused the attention of a young man who now hovered over the bed in which Ariel was lying. His dark face had a look of concerned joy, as if he knew he ought to be worried, but could, in all honesty, barely contain his excitement.

You look like I feel, Ariel laughed.

This didn’t quite elicit the reaction she had hoped for. Instead of smiling and giving her an answer, the man grimaced and turned to a female colleague who was also now hovering about.

It worked! he shouted excitedly, then, She’s speaking Pre-Fall. I didn’t expect it to sound like that.

It’s a bloody miracle I’m speaking anything at all! What’s going on?

There will be time to explain later. For now, how do you feel? asked the newcomer.

I feel pretty good. In fact, I feel great, but also confused. As far as I know, two minutes ago I was laid out on a table in a completely different room, with completely different people, wizened, weak and close to death. I felt bloody awful then. Why, how am I supposed to feel?

A look of momentary confusion flicked over the woman’s face, but then she seemed to latch onto the last sentence like a lifebuoy.

We don’t know, exactly. We have never done this before, well, not exactly this. Something similar, but ... in any case, it’s good that you don’t feel close to death – we wouldn’t want that – no, not at all. This was said by the female attendant in halting phrases and what seemed to be a great deal of nervousness.

Before Ariel had a chance to say anything in reply, the woman, whom Ariel assumed was some sort of doctor, followed by saying, Perhaps we had better introduce ourselves. I am Tamar. I am the Prime Contributor of the Wellness Centre in the City of New Sydney. This is my colleague, Asha. Tamar gestured towards the young man who had first looked down at Ariel. He is a Senior Researcher in the Wellness Centre. He and his team are primarily responsible for bringing you back from the dead.

Tamar clearly has a sense of the dramatic, thought Ariel.

There was so much to think about in this introduction that Ariel found it hard to decide which question to ask first: what’s ‘New Sydney’, what is a ‘Wellness Centre’, and where the hell did these strange names come from? Tamar had described Asha as a ‘senior’ researcher but he looked like he was barely into his twenties. Tamar looked perhaps only ten years older, but seemed, as ‘Prime Contributor’, to be quite a lot higher in rank and title. Tamar had said ‘back from the dead’, which suggested to Ariel that she had indeed been dead, or as close to it as to not matter semantically. This thought brought her back to her original question. She really couldn’t get anything else sorted until she knew the answer.

Ah, thanks for the intro. I, as far as I know, am Ariel Connolly, and I would really like to know what’s going on?

It is understandable that you should feel confused, Arielconnolly, but it is good that you remember who you are. We weren’t sure if the load would work, given the unusual circumstances, Tamar explained.

Ariel smiled at the use of her full name.

It’s just Ariel. You don’t have to use my full name.

Ah, that will be easier, Tamar acknowledged. There will be much to discuss, but for now, it’s probably enough to say that the body you now inhabit has been grown anew from cells we extracted from your body, which was preserved in a pre-Fall research facility discovered 30 years ago. It took us a long time to find your scanned memories and match them up to your body, and another nineteen years to go through a normal growth and maturation cycle to make the new body. Your memories, or indeed, ‘you’ as you identify yourself, have been downloaded from the cognitive network scan taken just before you died in 2017. The year now is post-Fall 184, or in your pre-Fall reckoning, 2209 AD.

Suddenly, ‘what the fuck’ seemed altogether inadequate.

Chapter 2

That first meeting seemed to flash past Ariel like a whirlwind. She was so overwhelmed that most of what Tamar had told her had not seemed to stick. All she could think about for the first few hours was that she had died, apparently only three days after the scan had been taken, that the world she knew no longer existed, and that everyone she had once known was gone.

The first encounter with Tamar and Asha had lasted only a few minutes. Then Tamar had left, saying, If you feel ill at any time, please tell someone immediately. As I said, we don’t really know what to expect, so just as a precaution it’s best to check everything. I will leave you with Asha. He will show you how to use the ICD to display some files we’ve put together. I’m very glad to meet you Ariel. Welcome to New Sydney.

Ariel didn’t really know what she expected to happen, but this business-like matter-of-fact approach wasn’t it. This world would take some getting used to, she knew. Ariel wondered how long it would take her to adapt, or indeed, whether she was capable of it. There was nothing she could do about it, she concluded. Her best chance was to find out as much as she could about her new world, as soon as possible.

Asha, what’s an ICD?

This, Asha answered simply, holding up the small hand-held device.

Umm, okay. So, what does it do? What’s its purpose?

Oh, of course – sorry. ICD stands for Integrated Communications Device. It’s actually only one component in a network of electronic and biological circuits that all work together to monitor and interact with the human body for which it is configured. Everyone has one. The circuits are grown into our bodies so that by the time we mature, the artificial circuits and the original organic ones are fused into a seamless package that taps into almost every physical system. Emotions, nervous systems, brain functions and senses can all be monitored, and in some cases manipulated, by interacting with either the hand-held ICD or via retinal display. We call this technology, and the output from the use of it, a ‘feed’ or ‘feeder’. Different systems sometimes have specific names, like the pain feed or the empathy feed, but mostly we just use the generic term, relying on context to indicate the specific system.

But Tamar said I would find information on this one. Does that mean it also stores data external to the user?

Yes, exactly. I suppose what we call the feed is specific to you. The ICD mediates the feed, and also stores other information that can be saved or downloaded onto it. Some of that data will be stand-alone, like a piece of music, or a map, but almost all the data can also interact with your feed.

Ariel still looked slightly baffled, so Asha tried to elaborate further.

Look, take music as an example. You can download music from the city’s database of music, and that piece will sit in the ICD as data. But if you play it, the ICD interacts with your auditory system so you hear the music. You can change the feed settings to hear it loud or soft, to listen while you are having a conversation, or even to feel what the player was feeling as they played, if there’s an empathy feed file associated with the music. And, of course, anyone near you at the time you were listening would be able to feel your reaction to the music too, because of the empathy feed.

The whole idea made Ariel shudder. She had visions of sci-fi horror beings, more machine than human, rampaging over the earth with no emotions and no sense of morals to keep them in check. When she asked Asha what it felt like, he became confused.

It doesn’t feel like anything, he said. I suppose I’ve got nothing to compare it to. We are born with this technology. It grows with us. We can never remember a time when we didn’t have it. Anyway, do you feel different? Your feed has been transmitting since before we did the load and woke you up. We’ve been monitoring your state of anxiety, and physical systems like heart rate and brain function, the whole time.

Ariel’s first reaction was outrage, but she soon realised that she was in the modern day equivalent of a hospital. Of course they would want to know what was going on with her physically. It was just that this monitoring was completely hidden, so she hadn’t had a chance to think about it until now.

Well, if you put it like that, no, I don’t feel any different. It’s just that I’m not sure I’m comfortable with other people knowing my feelings. Vital signs are one thing, but monitoring my emotions seems a bit intrusive to me.

If it makes you more comfortable, we can turn off the empathy feed then, but frankly, we consider your emotional state to be just as important as other things like heart rate and blood pressure. How you feel is a critical part of the wellness equation, Ariel. Anyway, it’s not just anybody – it’s me and Tamar. Only us.

Later, Ariel thought about all that Asha had told her, and decided not to bother to ask him to turn off the feed. It made sense that the Centre would want to know how their experiment was progressing, but she was not yet ready to see what would happen if she started to receive in addition to transmitting. The people of New Sydney were clearly comfortable with the technology, and lived with it with no thought of how strange it might seem to someone unfamiliar with the concept. They used the feeder all the time, according to Asha. They knew what people close to them were feeling, and once someone’s feed was ‘tuned in’ to another’s you could always check where they were. The feed data transmitted and was received automatically by every ICD within range. The range was apparently quite small for un-tuned ICDs – about a two metre radius – so anyone could feel what any other person was feeling if they were within two metres of them. The range was extended to as much as 10 metres for an ICD that had been tuned to another. Friends apparently often tuned ICDs as a matter of course, so they would know immediately if they were at the same club, or walking in the gardens near each other. They could check locations easily once they were tuned, so they could find each other when they wanted to, and messages from tuned ICDs were readily downloaded to the user and dealt with through automatic settings.

Asha described the benefits of the feeder as if they were the most natural things in the world. Ariel wasn’t at all sure she agreed. The thought that someone, even a friend, could know where she was and what she was feeling, even when they couldn’t see her, filled her with dread. She had resisted phone settings and social network locator applications for exactly this reason. Her privacy was sacred to her. So what if a friend was walking some eight metres away from you, she thought. What if you didn’t feel like talking to them? What if you were talking about them to another friend at the time? But then, Ariel thought, at least you’d know they might be near enough to overhear the conversation. The possibilities were mind-boggling, but good or bad, Ariel wasn’t ready to test out the receiving function any time soon.

..........

In reviewing the information on her ICD, she found that the City of New Sydney was built entirely underground. The network of corridors and rooms she had glimpsed in the Wellness Centre linked to roads, gardens, satellite suburbs, industrial areas and housing. Nothing was built above ground except exits to the outside world and a handful of structures that had existed before the first City inhabitants retreated below ground.

Turning her search towards the city’s political structures gave her a little more information about her new home. She read that New Sydney was an oligarchy of sorts, with decisions made by a group of Elite citizens formed into a council. This Resource Council, also called the Council of Primes, was responsible for allocating and reviewing the city’s resources with the assistance of a vast network of electronic data gathered from ICDs, worksites, and every system in existence in the city, including the power system, water management, food production and waste collection. Data from all the city’s systems, and all individual ICDs, was fed into a formula called the Resourcing Formula, and the Council relied on the Resourcing Formula for everything they did and every decision they made. The only way to get onto the Council was to be appointed as a Prime – the first and highest honour any citizen could hold, other than to be appointed City Director.

A Prime had ultimate power and responsibility for their domain. Prime-ships included Security, Mining and Resource Recovery, Technology Resources, Infrastructure and Engineering, Food Production and Storage, Wellness, Cultural Resources, and a handful of other departments. Primes were chosen based on a complex formula that took into account past service to the city, resource contributions, personal character, and a host of other things both measurable and subjective. The key thing, as far as Ariel could tell, was that they were appointed, not elected. Only the Resource Formula and the Council of Primes themselves had any choice in the matter.

Primes were appointed for life, and could only be drawn from those citizens deemed to be the most intelligent of individuals. Every citizen was exhaustively tested in the first 10 years of their life, and as a result, was classified as one of five categories, from Elite down to Class One, Two, Three or Four. Elites were judged as being the most superior of beings, physically and mentally. The number of people accepted into each class was determined by the Resourcing Formula and administered by the Resource Council, and so the number of people genetically engineered to be in the Elite class, and all other classes, was strictly controlled.

There were far fewer Elites than there were of any other single class. In a population of around 500,000 people, barely five thousand of them were Elites, and of those, only seventeen of them had the power to make decisions that affected the whole population, by virtue of their position on the Resource Council.

In New Sydney, Ariel discovered, resources were the single most important consideration. If an activity didn’t make more resources than it used, it did not survive. Whether the resource was energy, water, food, people, space, or any number of other things, the ‘in must exceed out’ formula always over-rode any other determination. It was no longer good enough merely to enjoy a thing for its own sake. An activity had to have a useful, pragmatic purpose and be quantifiable and measurable in resource terms.

In these early days, Ariel spent as much time as she could trying to find out about the demographics, politics, culture, social structure and economy of her new home. Most of what she discovered filled her with excitement. She started to look forward to becoming more integrated into the community, no matter what her status might end up to be.

For one thing, sexuality was not an issue anymore, apparently, and neither was gender any hindrance to fulfilling your desires or potential. The top jobs seemed to be pretty much equally divided between men and women. Within this class, people were ranked depending on their job, as Prime, Head of a functional unit, Senior Researcher and such like, but all Elites seemed to consider themselves as equal to each other, and equally capable of attaining the highest offices of City Director and Member of the Resource Council.

The resourcing model on which the economy ran meant there was no cash in the city, so that which was not automatically provided by the state was exchanged for ‘Contribution Credits’, known colloquially as conties. Such a system was not easily subverted; the more you contributed, the more credit you accrued, and there were no bonuses and few ways of bribing people to do something that was not beneficial to the City as a whole. Full electronic control of earnings and transfers between contributors and providers meant everything could be tracked, and illegitimate transactions would soon come to light. This seemed to Ariel to be a workable system akin to the socialism she had once been such a fan of, but without the drawbacks that had allowed the socialist model to be subverted into fascism and dictatorships – or so she thought.

Another thing that Ariel learnt in her studies was that discrimination on the grounds of racial background, sexual preference, or age seemed to be completely absent. She had already observed a dazzling array of racial heritage amongst the people she had seen in the Wellness Centre. Asian, Arabic, African, Indian, European, dark skin, pale skin and every shade in between seemed to exist in roughly the same proportions and apparently had no bearing on rank, class or job allocation.

As for age discrimination, you couldn’t tell by looking at them what age a person really was. Ariel, for instance, only looked 19, but she had the experience of 67 years of life.

Tamar had told her that while procreation was very tightly controlled, because of the resourcing issues of raising children, sex for pleasure was unregulated. If there were taboos around sex, they were not associated with the gender of the partner (or partners), but rather whether the coupling had an adverse effect on an individual’s potential to positively contribute. It was a testament to the human race’s love of sex that it seemed to have resisted all attempts at being quantified as part of the resource formula.

Ariel had noticed that every person who worked in the Wellness Centre wore the same style, cut and design of clothing – basically, a uniform. The whole City had a dress code, and no-one strayed from it, presumably because they couldn’t. Clothing was a resource, and as such it was as tightly controlled as any other. Class was displayed on the collar, and the rank within that class was also shown there, but otherwise the only difference in the clothing was in its colour. Every major Resource Section had its own colour. Wellness was pale blue, so anyone who was assigned to contribute in Wellness wore the same uniform. Security personnel all wore black (Ariel wondered why police and armies always did wear these sorts of colours throughout history). A section Ariel was particularly interested in, that of Cultural Resources, had a dark red uniform. This area was run by a Prime called Joseph, she discovered, who happened to also be the oldest person still alive in New Sydney.

It appeared to Ariel that Cultural Resources ought to be the place where the history of the City might be found, and some explanation about what had happened to the world since her death. She found, to her annoyance, that the information supplied on the ICD for her education was rather scant in certain areas Ariel considered to be very important. For example, a short bio on the Department called Mining and Resource Recovery had mentioned that mining and scavenging for pre-Fall resources was a routine function. Asha had used the same term ‘pre-Fall’ in one of the first sentences Ariel had heard when she awoke. Tamar had also mentioned it in relation to how long Ariel’s consciousness had been stored.

When Ariel looked up the term ‘pre-Fall’, she found that in 2025, by her Pre-Fall Calendar, there had been a massive upheaval across the earth, and pretty much everything had been destroyed. The surface of the earth and the climate had been ravaged to the extent that it was no longer possible to live in the environment. The people of New Sydney had survived the Fall, as they termed it, by escaping underground. At first they used existing underground facilities located near where they were at the time of the Fall. Eventually, over generations, they had built the current city and surrounding satellites and nodes. No-one went up to the surface unless they had a good reason. Generally, the only good reason was to find things they needed, like metal, minerals, plastics, chemicals, and building material; things that could be mined, recycled, used as is, or reprocessed.

Ariel found the lack of further information about the Fall to be very frustrating. If the people of New Sydney knew what caused it, that information wasn’t to be found in any of the files currently supplied to her. All she could find was that the earth was dead, and as far as the New Sydney community was concerned, the only things left alive were those things they had saved and nurtured since the Fall.

Clearly, there was a lot to be learnt. Fortunately, Ariel realised, she had another whole lifetime in which to discover it.

..........

Ariel’s periods of solitude were the only time she got to study the information on her ICD. Most of the time, however, she was not alone. For a week, at least, Ariel was studied meticulously and thoroughly by a bevy of people generically introduced to her as ‘wellness contributors’. She got the distinct impression that even when she was alone, she was being observed.

It reminded her of the weeks she had spent in hospital before she had gone to the research facility for the cognitive scan. The constant scrutiny, the checking and re-checking of charts and notes, and the hushed conversations that took place around her made her wonder whether the staff expected her to drop dead at any moment.

Ariel had never felt better. A mirror propped in one corner of the otherwise Spartan room revealed all. She was young – really young. Not the crumpled and denuded 67 year old that she had been before her death, but more like 18 or 19. When she studied herself, she saw an attractive young woman with more muscle than she could ever remember having had. Did I look this good the first time round or has someone engineered this? she asked herself. Ariel thought back to how she had felt about being 19 years old the first time around. She had hated how she looked and had covered herself up with as much loose ill-fitting clothing as she could to hide her form. She remembered her nose, cheeks and arms had been covered in a fine spray of light brown and ginger freckles that she had plastered make-up over, to try to hide them too. There was no sign of them now; her skin was pale and unblemished, except for one tiny scar she had noticed on her right hand. Her skin looked almost translucent. No sun, she realised.

Her hair was another case in point. She had always considered her hair to be mousy-brown and non-descript. Now it was a quite attractive golden-brown, with tinges of red. It was cut in the style she now recognised as typical for New Sydney residents; a short-ish bob that fell to just touch the collar of their coloured uniforms.

Ariel looked at herself and fell in love with her body as she had never done in her previous life. All trace of the angular, gangly teenager that she had replaced in midlife with an overweight, matronly figure was gone. The body now reflected in the mirror was strong, lithe and well-proportioned. The long limbs didn’t look gawky, they looked toned and ready for action. Ariel began to wonder just what she would be capable of in such a body.

I should have taken a better look at myself all those years ago. She felt fit, and indestructible; ready for a whole lifetime of adventures. Ready to do all those things she regretted not doing in her previous lifetime. Ready, in fact, to live life differently this time around. Gone would be the timid girl confused by her own desires and shying from others’ opinions of her. She would make the most of this second chance and not squander opportunities.

She had been given an elixir of youth. Ariel didn’t stop to think about what price might be exacted from her in exchange for such a gift. It never occurred to her that being 19 again may not turn out to be a gift at all.

……….

Tamar, despite having a job of high importance as a Prime, seemed to have taken a special interest in Ariel, and made time to see her frequently, at all hours of the day or night. Ariel supposed this was not really surprising, since her unique position as a pre-Fall inhabitant made her eminent, whether she liked it or not. Sometime in the second week of her awakening, Tamar and Asha invited Ariel for a tour of the Wellness facility. Ariel hoped it would be the first of many excursions. She was beginning to get bored with seeing the same few rooms and faces. She also decided this was a good chance to tackle one of her many burning questions.

Tamar, Ariel began, why was it me you chose to bring back?

Ah, well, technically we didn’t choose you. You were just lucky, I suppose. We found only two bodies successfully preserved since their ... ah, their ... death. Yours was one of them. We found twenty scans, eighteen of which were free from degradation and file corruption errors. Yours was the only one we could match up correctly with the preserved body. We hoped there would be less trauma aroused by loading a scan into a recognised body, rather than loading a scan into a body we weren’t sure it belonged in, so to speak. You were the only person we could be sure we could do that with, Tamar answered. Asha nodded agreement.

Wow! Ariel said, stunned. I’ve never thought of myself as lucky. I can’t remember even winning a raffle out of hundreds in my whole lifetime. I guess if you’re going to win one thing, a second chance at life is the one!

Ariel watched confusion play over Tamar and Asha’s faces. She was aware of how different she sounded compared to their precise, business-like speech pattern, but she thought it was more than that. They could understand each other, the same way that Australians and Irish could understand each others’ particular creole, so the confusion must be coming from the actual words she chose to use.

You’re confused, I can tell. Where did I lose you?

Lose us? Asha asked.

Yes, what I mean is ... umm, were there particular words you didn’t understand?

Ah, of course. Yes, several. The first one – what was it? Whah? Tamar asked.

Wow, Ariel explained. It’s a way of showing awe, or expressing an emotion like joy, or excitement.

I can tell we will all need a lot of patience to get used to each other’s way of communicating, Tamar observed.

Yes, clearly, Ariel agreed.

Things would be a lot easier if you were prepared to use the feeder, Asha prodded. This was getting to be an old topic between him and Ariel, despite knowing each other barely a week.

You keep telling me that, Asha, and I keep telling you I’m not ready yet. The whole thing scares the buggery out of me – oh, sorry, that’s another term you won’t understand. Anyway, I need more time. I know I’ll have to tackle it eventually, but honestly, I’m still getting used to the fact that my breasts are pert and my knees work perfectly. I’m flat out sorting my own feelings out right now, without trying to sort out someone else’s.

That’s fair enough, Asha, Tamar voiced her support. It’s going to take time and there’s no need for haste.

As they spoke, the trio walked from one place to another. The Wellness Centre turned out to be a huge, multi-storey complex that housed many different departments. Ariel observed that it was similar to a 21st century hospital, except most of the areas seemed to be dedicated to preventative medicine rather than treatment of present ailments. There was also a noticeable focus on health and wellbeing of the whole person rather than on merely curing the body. Wellness, in the New Sydney definition, clearly covered all manner of things such as mental health, spiritual wellbeing, exercise and fitness, and even rehabilitation of criminals.

When they arrived outside a door marked ‘Secure Therapy and Rehabilitation Facility’, Ariel’s curiosity was sparked.

This is where people who have been sentenced to therapy and restitution for criminal acts are sent, Tamar was saying. She made to walk on to another area.

Ariel, however, had a different idea. Tamar’s explanation had only made her more intrigued. She had spent much of her midlife career as a social worker, and prisons were one of her particular areas of study. Ariel wanted to know what New Sydney did with their outcasts.

Wait. Wait a second. Can we go in? she asked.

Oh, certainly, but are you sure? Most people in New Sydney find this facility rather … ah ... challenging, I suppose you’d say. Aberrant behaviour is rare here, and most people are helped by friends or recognise problems in themselves well before they get to a stage where they break the law and need to be detained. The people in here are probably only one step away from being removed from the workforce permanently. It can be very confronting to see them in this facility.

It sounds terrible, but I’d still like to see it … if that’s okay. I have a particular interest in how societies treat their criminals. You can tell an awful lot about a community and its attitudes by looking at who gets incarcerated and how they are treated, I reckon.

Hmm, that may well be true, Asha observed.

Tamar said nothing, but stepped up to the door and swiped her thumb across a small pad located on the wall to the left of the entrance. The double doors swung open silently, and Tamar led the way into the foyer.

The room was just large enough to house what looked like a reception desk, a waiting area, and a door to another room, in addition to a second set of double doors. It looked much less like a police station than Ariel had imagined it might.

Tamar moved to the reception desk and was about to speak, but the young man behind the desk surged to his feet and spoke first, after a quick double-take at the uniform Tamar was wearing.

Prime Contributor, he stammered. Welcome. How can I help?

As with other areas they had visited that day, Ariel noticed the receptionist was wearing the same pale blue uniform that everyone else in the Wellness Centre wore, including Tamar and Asha. Now, seeing Tamar, Asha and the receptionist so close together, she could see the subtle differences in the clothing. The cut and design of all the garb was exactly the same, but Tamar had a distinct gold ring around the high-cut collar, where Asha had a silver one, and the receptionist none at all. In place of the metallic ring, the receptionist had two slashes of white inset diagonally into the collar at the front, on either side of a small neck opening. Tamar and Asha’s uniforms looked almost new, whereas the receptionist’s looked well worn.

Thank you, Tamar answered the receptionist. I’m going to take some guests for a tour of the facility. Please inform Controller Marius of my presence.

The receptionist sat back down and moved to manipulate a pad which looked like a larger version of the ICD hand-held unit Ariel now carried, just like everyone else in the city. Before he had a chance to finish, however, the double doors opened and a tall, skinny, gaunt looking man with brown hair and a line of two day growth stepped hastily towards Tamar.

Prime Contributor, what a surprise. I happened to notice your entrance just now. How can we help?

Ah, Controller, Tamar explained. I suppose you’re aware of Senior Research Contributor Asha’s recent success in loading a cognitive scan of a pre-Fall inhabitant into a new volunteer? Marius nodded, bowing slightly towards Asha in acknowledgement. This, Tamar gestured towards Ariel, is the result of this minor miracle. Ariel, this is Controller Marius. He is the Head of the Secure Facility.

Pleased to meet you, Controller, Ariel said, stepping forward and automatically holding out her hand in greeting. Marius looked at her hand, as if he wasn’t sure what to do with it. Ariel had already observed that the hand shake was still used in meetings between equals in New Sydney, so she wasn’t sure why Marius hesitated. He didn’t hesitate for too long though. He glanced quickly at Tamar, then gripped Ariel’s hand firmly.

I’m very pleased to meet you too, Contributor Ariel.

Ariel has expressed a wish to see how the facility runs, Marius. I thought I’d show her around and explain a few things. I trust that will be acceptable?

Tamar’s words sounded deferential, but Ariel got the distinct impression that there was no request meant, and none assumed by Marius. Tamar obviously didn’t expect to be denied. Ariel made a quick review of Marius’ uniform and noted the collar arrangement was the same as Asha’s. He shared the same rank. A decidedly lower rank than Tamar held, gathering by Marius’ behaviour towards her.

Do you mind if I do not accompany you, Prime? I was just in the middle of preparing some urgent reports for tribunal review next week.

That’s perfectly fine, Marius. Carry on. I’ll let you know if we need you, Tamar said, graciously.

With no further discussion, and seemingly without any need to sign in or register, Tamar walked up to the internal doors and swiped her thumb again towards a sensor in the door jamb. The doors opened immediately. Ariel got the impression they would not open for just anyone.

So, Ariel, Tamar asked as she led them through to a labyrinth of offices, therapy rooms, open areas and corridors, What would you like to know?

Umm, I’m not sure really. I guess I’d like to know what the accommodation is like, how long people are locked up, or even if they are locked up, for that matter. I’d also like to know whether there’s any pattern to who gets detained, and what they are detained for. Umm, also ... what do people do all day, while they are here? Also, umm … Tamar, why did Marius hesitate to shake my hand? It seemed like I might have been offending him.

Ah, I believe it was because he couldn’t tell what class you are. We haven’t analysed the test results yet, so he wasn’t sure if you were of sufficient social standing to be worthy of him shaking your hand. Tamar said this without a hint of apology, as if it was natural.