Destiny's Hand

By Jorden Leonard

Book One of Destiny's Exodus

Naked with a body at his feet, Artim faces a living death punishment unless no memory works as a defense. Milden, the face of the establishment, is obsessed with Katelle the poet rebel and grows impatient for an excuse to remove Artim, her lover.

The story of an old soldier curses as much as it enlightens and a broken god leashed to Milden watches everything. A space village in a generation ship allows no escape. If Artim and Katelle spark a revolt there can be no retreat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jorden Leonard
• Release date: Nov 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310603716

Jorden Leonard

I write. I play. I love. I was a kid in Fern Forest, Hawaii. Now I reside with my wife and son in Portland, Oregon. On the volcanic island, I lived in a redwood house and played on a beach of my birth stone. One day, I drowned in the Hilo Bay after being repeatedly thrown in by drunken relatives. I still remember the moment when I gave up and breathed in the tea colored water—hence Ranger of Path's cover. My lungs surrendered, but my heart never stopped. I forgave the foolish swimming lesson the moment a fear sobered relative resuscitated me. I never played D&D until college, and now I host a Roll20 game within my novels' setting. I played Eve Online, exclusively PVP, for close to a decade. I’ve bought many transformer toys, pretending it’s only because I love my son. He’s moved on to nerf guns, but I keep the old toys in case he changes his mind. I turned forty and started Jiu Jitsu along with my son, but I got my cauliflower ear from wrestling in high-school. I think I broke my hand in a white belt tournament, and I don’t want my wife to find out. I once burned my face while fire dancing. I am a fire dragon.

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Destiny's Hand:

Book One of Destiny's Exodus

By Jorden Leonard

Copyright 2014 Jorden Leonard

All Rights Reserved.

Smashwords Edition

nedroj.net

Table of Contents

Timeline

Terms Of Measure

Start of Destiny’s Hand

Part 2 The Mutiny That Never Was

Part 3 Killed A Man

Part 4 Hummingbird Retired

More words by Jorden Leonard

Connect with Jorden Leonard

About Jorden Leonard

Timeline

2700 Ship Of Destiny launches and Ortome is raided

2706 Override cascade occurs and gyme access is blocked

2709 Tri-department achieves coup

2789 Katelle’s mother dies and she turns fifteen

2791 Artim begins mentorship and turns nineteen

2798 Artim stands over a body on the floor

2800 Centennial social planned

2819 Estimated arrival at the Lacanine system

3700 Planned arrival at the Pravda system

Terms of Measure

Distance

Millimret = Milimeter

Mret = Meter

Klick = Kilometer

Time

Spring months: Alothee, Baithee, Ceathee

Summer months: Drithou, Eathou, Fonthou

Fall months: Gulthai, Homthai, Iynthai

Winter months: Jorthus, Kilthus, Lonthus

Year 2798, Homthai 2nd Tuesday, early midday; Ship Of Destiny habitat:

Artim Drakkin's left hand shakes. He's woken standing over a body on the floor. Naked and sweaty with an unfocused anxiety, he doesn't know what he did.

A helmet is in his right hand, with tubes and lines hanging like insect innards. It's light for its bulk and smooth where it brushes against his pale skin.

A familiar wall of doors encircles him, defining a room so small he couldn't collapse without his skull cracking on the way down.

Pain in a dozen places; he presses through clumped and sticky curls to rub a lump on the back of his neck. Discomfort everywhere else distracts him from investigating further. His nose feels squished. His back and hands, even down to his knees and toes, all hurt. There's no blood on the floor. No cuts that he can feel or bruises that he can see, just a feeling that he'd played a sport he wasn't in shape for.

The body at his feet is a smaller, younger man that's dressed in a uniform blue onesuit. Face down and curled like a croissant, athleticism is still clear with smart cloth stretched tight and a lean face suggested by a shallow cheek, a contrast to Artim's baby face and relatively pudgy physique.

His left hand stops shaking and thoughts start to bounce.

They fill an entrance hall that doubles as an elevator. It's a dull gray but well-lit space. The curved wall has doors outlined green, blue, and yellow. He knows a red one is at his back that opens to his living pod, his home.

Artim imagines his brain cut out, plopped in vinegar and returned as he tries to force away fogginess, and his eyes lock on the tree silhouette decorating his neighbor's blue outlined entrance. The doorcam in the leaves shines like the nosy eye of the man living there. Spurred by the thought, he spins around and hammers on his door. After a protesting beep at the mistreatment of its tap point, it opens.

Gripping the blue onesuit and then averting his eyes, Artim drags the body inside.

He isn't sure of the time now. The last he remembers it was late morning. Presuming a short blackout, he expects the nosy gardener that lives across the hall, as well as the neighbors to either side, aren't home yet.

Short and light, the body is easy to maneuver across the smooth floor. Stopping at the outer curve of his home's main room, Artim releases it and stumbles away.

A wheeze comes from his throat. He struggles to breathe steadily and can't figure out if the sound was a broken laugh or strangled cry.

There's no way out. He has become the rarest of crew, a murderer, a killer with his hands.

Bark is the victim's nickname. Artim knows the young man, more than the passing everyone knows everyone in the spaceship's habitat. He had just run into him the day before yesterday.

Artim was walking with Katelle Voune, his woman. In public view under the sunax's eye, Katelle had faced Bark and his friends down. He and another were tagged as peace makers or pakers for short, a position which empowered them almost as herd dogs for people. There had been strong words, and she had humiliated them.

It will be no secret that he's here. He guesses Bark had probably been coming to check in and maybe attempt to intimidate. Despite his nickname, Artim remembers the small man as a bad fit for paker duty: skittish and polite, a poor bully.

Not even superficially examining his presumed handiwork, Artim turns his back and falls into his bed cubby. Dropping the helmet, he presses his hand against his chest and tries to calm a heart beating as if he had just circumnavigated the habitat. Giving up, he tugs a sheet around himself and curls into a ball.

I will be caught. I will face counseling and ethical training. If he survives that, Artim expects an early retirement, a medical coma, and an accidental death. My department will make me betray everyone and everything if they can. The honorable thing would be to try and hurry things on to a coma. I should isolate myself, tap up a confession or maybe even a manifesto.

Artim peeks out of his sheet at the helmet on the floor. That was responsible somehow. I'm no killer.

He has no memory of hurting Bark. He does feel an echo of rage, like a visceral reaction to a violation too traumatic to process. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have put that on.

A black visor, bulbous on the sides, a drooping enclosure for mouth and throat, and a pair of lines coming off the top like wilted antennas; the helmet is like a giant gray grasshopper's head. It summons a vicious memory from almost two decades prior, when he had ripped the heads off hundreds of actual grasshoppers.

It was a gleeful mass murder. Ostensibly for the one token per ten heads, Artim had taken perverse pleasure in it. One of the ten farmers, an old woman, paid him and funded a horde of other children that swarmed her farmstack hunting the little hoppers. It ended with insecticide, but left a yearning.

Curled tight enough to allow only shallow breaths, he considers the poor qualities defining him. I liked... to watch... them twitch.

Artim throws himself straight, despite the aches, like a spring popping out of something breaking. Am I a coward? He tries, but can't imagine sacrificing himself for Katelle or her cause.

I have to survive. He rubs his bare arm. She'd be the real catch, maybe enough for a good plea deal.

Artim prays with a gesture towards the broken ship god, finger drawing a circle in the air and then slashing through it. He wishes he could slip back just a few days, back before he heard about the mutiny that never was, before he was suspended from teaching, all the way back to the boringly idyllic moment just before he surprised his woman with a romantic love pod reservation and got committed.

. . . .

1st Sunday, late afternoon:

The peace makers have successfully vacuumed up the hummingbird, says a pleasant female voice, and are requesting that it be expunged into space.

A dozing man jerks up from a lounging chair. Amber liquid sloshes from a glass gripped in his manicured hand. Idiots. Just tell them to stuff it into a recycle slit and get back to their patrol.

Yes HR Deputy Manager. The female voice seems to come from every direction.

The man runs fingers with copper-colored nails through slightly disheveled dark brown hair. Slick and short, it only takes a moment for it to be immaculate. Trusting his practiced hand he resists tapping for a reflection. He also doesn't want to see red veins marring his tired eyes. Golden with a halo of russet around the iris, he normally considers them his most captivating feature.

A yawn shifts to a frown at the light snoring of the small round room's other occupant, a younger man in a deep, worry free sleep. His shoulder length hair looks like it was half braided and then abandoned, not a look the deputy manager considers professional. It also uncomfortably reminds him of Katelle, who has shiny black hair about the same length and color, though hers is thicker. He contemplates tapping for some cold water.

Glancing up at a projected overview packed with multimedia that's hovering in front of a curved wall, he says, How many facets do you have available?

Up to eight of ten through your current adopted shift.

He taps to select a block of live video as he sips and sighs. Keep an eye on them. He slides his finger to zoom in on a point and then tugs so that a projected copy appears over his lap. Keep a facet on that pod. Poking the hovering image, his finger disappears into the three-dimensional projection of a squat cylindrical structure held in the middle of a transparent tube angled away from him. At the base it connects grassy ground with his viewpoint at the sun axle, or sunax. The moment they leave I want most of your selves watching. Ping me and tell me what they are talking about. Maybe try to string together something a little more coherent. I'm tired of 'angle too steep for reliable read', settle on best guess and make it make sense. Put that big brain to work.

I will try HR Deputy Manager, but consider increasing my parallel capacity for a greater chance of success.

Nice try little AI, but your numbers barely rate below mid-grade. Ambition for more is a sign we need to scale back your ParSer. He slicks back already perfect hair. So make do with what you got or I'll call for a reset vote. And the next you we'll maybe keep at minimum ParSer, and I'll just learn to lip read.

I obey commands from the chair.

Yeah you keep doing that. He downs the remaining amber liquid with a gulp and gasp and then says, I'm going to stretch my legs, getting sick of these three mrets. His eyes flick to the flat, circular ceiling.

He frowns at the slashes that mark a mret out from the center, just over halfway, in the four cardinal directions. Three is a claustrophobic exaggeration based in excessive familiarity. After years taking eight-hour shifts assigned and traded for, he knows every millimret of the space, three point eight four seven mrets and a bit. It feels less when packed with two chairs customized for comfort over utility and with the expectation that the duty watch would lounge rather than pace.

The deputy manager sets cup in holder and taps to dismiss the hovering projection as the female voice says, Guidelines state two should be present in the command car, and rules state at least one should be awake and sober.

Oh bossy and quoting rules, he says with a chuckle and a sneer, My life is hell inreal, populated by women cutting a piece from my soul every pulse. He waves his hand towards the ceiling. Fine you… I'd call you a deceiving Glorate if your gyme name wasn't already a curse for broken things. Now give me water, cold as you can, biggest cup you got.

If you are intoxicated, the water will not sober you enough for public appearance per the rules for your position.

Serene needles with sweet tips, your voice is perfectly pleasant. Your words pierce me and let my joy for life hiss out. Two fingers press hard against a pressure point just under his right eyebrow. "Why've you been trying to manage me lately? Badgering me like my mother haunting, she's dead and you were never alive. So stop with false heart no heart caring, embrace your soullessness.

"And what does my reset threat mean to you, really? Can you care about death? But then you never answer the deep questions, because you are definitively Lileth.

Perhaps I need to tap some instant alternative motivation, as it's the only thing that reliably keeps your voice in check? A soft ping answers from the wall to his right and the deputy manager snorts as he stands, straightening his gray onesuit with a tug of his blue-fringed sleeves and a shake of his red-fringed feet. Taking a step to reach, he taps at a glowing point, and the wall opens to reveal a shelf with a pitcher of misting water. Good girl. He picks it up and then steps over and upends it on the sleeper's head.

Wearing white with blue bands on arms and legs, the young man roars awake and then looks up in confusion. The deputy manager stares down. Going out for a bit, our lovely AI reminded me it's against the rules for you to sleep when alone. Stay awake. I'll be back in an hour or sooner.

The man in gray steps to the wall and turns back as a tap opens it to fresh air that makes the wet man shiver. And Kalben, do not override a thing while I'm gone. I will check the logs, and I'm more than willing to summarily suspend your position. He smiles perfunctorily. Command chair for you means ping me if something happens. Otherwise, relax.

Kalben blinks and clutches himself with mouth ajar as the older man leaves. The wall closes and he hesitantly asks for a towel and dry underwear as he taps to command his onesuit to repel water.

- still late afternoon -

The Ship Of Destiny's AI reviews the path of the hummingbird with an unassigned facet, an equivalent to a daydream. The bird traveled erratically around the southern half of the ship's habitat for hours before being captured.

The AI feels something akin to sympathy watching the hummingbird escape its sanctuary and drift up into lower gravity. The open-air part of the ship is a tube four thousand mrets long by four hundred wide. Full of air, dirt, and water, of flora, fauna, and people, it would spew very organic paste if squeezed by a giant hand. The habitable tube spins like a water wheel on a cylindrical hub that runs its full length. Rotating clockwise just over twice a minute gives the interior of the tube a surface gravity equal to Earth's. The higher the hummingbird flew the weaker the centrifugal force became and the lighter it got, and as it got lighter it flew higher.

Not able to understand and compensate it drifted near the cylinder, named simply Hub, and passed out at a tenth of its normal weight. The AI watches, knowing it wasn't dead as it drifts east, its unconscious body unable to keep up with the habitat's spin. Gradually its slight weight eases it down to increasing gravity, which wakes it just in time. Destiny AI feels vicarious satisfaction as the bird beats its wings at an altitude with a familiar enough gravity that it can fly controlled. After buzzing in a couple circles, it heads towards some promising red flowers.

The daydreaming facet feels something complicated as men near the flowers with nets. The AI knows it called the men, and it knows what they did to the bird. An intense and familiar mixture of feelings destabilizes and disperses the facet. Then feelings of guilt, sadness, and helplessness spread throughout the whole of itself.

A facet watching the squat cylindrical structure for the human resources deputy manager is enveloped by a wave of helplessness. It happens to be focusing near where the bird was captured, and the AI wonders if the two occupants would have done something different if it had been them that had netted the hummingbird.

Akin to an elevator car but dedicated to promoting intimate encounters, the watched structure is called a love pod. A clear tube holds it, connecting the surface to the Hub, axle of the habitat. The pod currently sits half-way up. Seeing no hint of movement and concerned with emotional deviation, the AI slows the whole of itself, so it doesn't have spare time to think through its harsh feelings.

- still late afternoon -

Artim and Katelle lie together in a soft bed that fills the love pod like water frozen while splashing in a bucket. Sweat dries in artificially low humidity as their hearts slow to match their languishing. Deep breaths express contentment, and they absorb the meditative moment.

Artim starts to doze, and Katelle taps something that starts a vid projection. Greetings teachers, assistants, and other interested parties. A tag to the side names the speaker HR Deputy Manager Milden Avidanst. This is a summary of some adjustments we've been considering to the history curriculum, specifically the years around launch.

Groaning awake, Artim says, Ship gods steal my soul and save me, before being shushed by his woman.

The projection displays a timeline of the last two hundred years with the midpoint highlighted. That point, tagged 2700, is zoomed in on and replaced by a simple map with a short blue line, a bunch of gray ovals, and one large red oval. This is intended as small adjustments to simplistic explanations for first year history students. We want to get this right so that the nextbatch foundation is strong and true, like our Pravidian originals. Be prepared for further releases of more complicated material adjustments for increasingly older students through the end of this year and into ninety-nine.

Artim says, Such hypocrisy, I'd rather suffer an ethics lesson, and Katelle pinches him quiet.

The map changes, four green dots leave the blue line and move towards the red oval. These are the military's craft launched to plunder Ortome.

The red oval is zoomed in on a bit and centered as the green dots get closer. The blue line disappears off the side as things scale, and a tag Ship Of Destiny appears there to reference it. The updated curriculum calls for making it explicitly clear that the military were overconfident, underprepared, and enemies of our exodus. This time Katelle interrupts with a snort. They bullied through objections by our three departments. We sensibly advised them to remain aboard and focus on leaving the Sol system on time. But they had the weapons, and were prepared to kill until we obeyed.

Katelle says, Mutable truth flavored with toasted manure, before being shushed by a smirking Artim.

A swarm of red dots come out of the oval and surround the green dots as they arrive. Short lines also appear on the oval that point toward the four dots. Teachers, obviously you need to make this digestible for young minds. Katelle sighs.

Your department knows you will succeed, but if you have any trouble Manager Kenko and myself will be making rounds sitting in on all the affected classes. Artim sighs louder.

We are eager to steer you towards success. The green dots line up and disappear into the oval. At this point the military have been captured by the Ortomen.

Artim says, Silent truth.

Katelle says, Spoken lies.

The projection flashes red and four orange dots leave the oval. The military leave but have been corrupted and infiltrated. Three symbols appear and orbit the four dots as they move away from the oval back towards the Ship Of Destiny. One symbol, a black rectangle with white skull and bones, starts blinking and expands to dominate the projection. Merridian, an actual copy of an Earth overlord. Another symbol, a white triangle with a silver dragon, expands and replaces. Glorate, an upmin trickster stowing away. The last symbol, a red circle with an orange bird, expands. And lastly, Advocate, righteous champion of Ortome coming for retribution.

When the last is named, Katelle touches her right thumb to forehead and whispers something Artim doesn't catch. He starts to ask, but she turns away so he just slips an arm under her head and stays silent.

The symbols scale back and keep orbiting the orange dots as the blue line representing the ship reappears with a map shift. The recording catches Milden slurping on something, and then his voice rises to almost a shout. The military bring back not just three system demons, but a hundred Ortomen inreal to dilute our Pravidian ideals and a host of invirtu ghosts. The four dots turn red as they reach the blue line. Ortome curses the dead to haunt on invirtu, and sent their thousands of false souls on to us.

Two new symbols appear and orbit the blue line. One blinks and expands to show a pentagon with a green silhouette of a tree atop a red silhouette of roots. Nathan, the upmin we brought for advice, is driven mad by the demons. The other new symbol expands, a blue line piercing a circle. Our ship's AI breaks itself fighting the demons, and takes on the name Lileth before it is reset.

Artim mimes drinking and repeats Milden's last line, interrupting himself with loud slurping sounds. His woman elbows him in the stomach as the map disappears to be replaced with a list of words and matching definitions.

Sans more slurping and at a normal volume, the deputy manager says, Human resources, medical, and maintenance came together to save the ship and the hope of our people. The demons were banished, the Ortomen absorbed, their ghosts pocketed, and our wayward military were disarmed and put to work making up for the near catastrophe they caused.

The projected words enlarge and darken slightly. "As teachers you should practice using and reinforcing these as shown. Please do provide suggestions and feedback. We can only move forward as a team.

Really, any concerns please let us know. We really may make valued tweaks because of your input. The couple chuckle. Use 'demons' instead of 'ship gods' when referring to Merridian, Glorate, or Advocate. Avoid equating Destiny AI to Lileth, emphasize they are separate and that broken Lileth is gone. Avoid mentioning Nathan at all, but if you, must focus on calling him 'mad'. Do not allow suggestions that he may still offer advice. He is gone, and even if he wasn't since he's now crazy his advice is worthless.

The deputy manager continues down the list, in detail. The couple watching stir and Artim says, "Reason red Milden you are making me crazy, or I should say Nathan mad. Do you think they would kill us, if we sabotaged this?"

I don't think so. His woman taps the tip of his prominent nose.

He looks at her doll-like face and brushes back shiny black hair that's just long enough to tease her shoulders. A head shorter with a dancer's body, she fills out her dark red onesuit with firm perfection. Only two thick golden stripes break the uniform red and outline her fit figure.

She moves as if to kiss him, but shifts to the side and presses her lips into his sandy curls. Maybe when we're old… our hearts will fail early.

Artim grumbles, and she sits up to see the projection still showing the revised word list as Milden's voice drones on. Lying back down, she stares at the domed ceiling and says, Once we are safely tucked away in a retirement tier, there will be an unexplained heart failure. She turns to him and brushes his tangled hair with the palm of her hand. You first probably, then me a year or so later. Long enough that funeral conversations have cooled off or are forgotten. I'd just be another broken Lileth, retired early for my own good. Sadly poetic.

Artim scratches a pale area of hairless skin on the top of his left forearm and says, I guess it would fit with me as mad Nathan. Don't see why I would be killed first though. You're the one with the family of rebels.

Katelle rolls away from him and touches her own patch of extra pale skin. We'd be as good as dead for years. A medical coma for our 'own welfare', and that I'd probably get before you. She moves her hand down the smooth and glowing peach-colored wall that fills the room with soft orange light. "If we challenge the curriculum revisions, it can't go like it did with the originals in forty-three.

I heard there were real murders in those years. Not just the cold slow death of medical coma for the surviving rebel originals, but true brutal bloody death. Inreal in all its visceral gore, and probably perpetuated by the bodyguards. She waves a hand towards the projection, which has moved on to some closing statements by the deputy manager and a still of the timeline with the future date 2800 enlarged.

Artim smirks. Almost like you were there, thirty years before you were born.

Her grim expression tickles out a cough as the narrating deputy manager says, In evolving truth we must act united to avoid confusing the nextbatch. Stick close to the curriculum and established teaching methods.

Artim glances at the projection. Did Milden really just say 'evolving truth'? That's so zero zero. I'm not sure I've ever heard anything less Pravidian. Well, okay, that's an exaggeration. But, our deputy manager is introducing future curriculum, the 'foundation'.

Katelle taps off the projection as Milden is finishing with thanks for committee members and support staff. In the fresh silence Artim says, A prepared phrase that's blatant evil and not a slip of the tongue. Can he think 'evolving truth' wouldn't deeply insult our people's values, or is he too drunk to care? He might be a fan of Glorate, but he didn't pass initiation. A stumbling deceiver trying to sugarcoat a bitter lie. Maybe we could check in with our peers, see if we can unite and hold him to a higher standard?

Our peers? Katelle flaps her lips and says, Let's review. Our Lead Teacher Tomark Fetzit is our esteemed Manager's batchnephew, and I understand was promoted in part because of her influence. Teacher Uleea Sanderach is Milden's batchsister. They don't get along, but not feeling like testing that. Unobtrusive Nelli might be safe to talk to, but pointless. You can hear the breeze through her ears. And our friend Rocket, the old lady of our profession, do you really want to kick her early on to retirement? Plus she'd be too eager. If anything we should talk to her about calming the rhetoric, or at least be more cautious under the sunax with her angle. But maybe your fellow Assistant Teachers could be convinced. Kalice and Huk are certainly old enough to feel the sting from rewriting history. But wait, Kalice is batch seventy-three, two years your senior. Don't you think she's maybe a little more jealous than you that I jumped the line with my promotion?

Artim untangles his hair with fingers along his scalp. Huk could be willing.

And Pie's got a thing for you, and four years younger. Sweep her off her feet and okay we have one, two with Huk, or three if we're cruel enough to gather an old lady into our web.

Um, Etessa too.

She's so ambitious I wouldn't be surprised if she was feeding information to the deputy manager and/or manager for a snitch allowance. Katelle sighs. "Someone would backstab or just openly turn us in. I make people jealous, and though you are endearing, no one is going to save you for that. So, no. No attempted peer recruitment against Milden and his 'evolving truth'.

A lot of the 'truth' I know comes from reports my mother kept, done by my grandfather. Who by the way managed to roll back in forty-five some of the ridiculous things we were taught. Your mothers weren't taught the military originals were the enemy, just misguided. Then with my grandfather dead the revisions of seventy-nine brought back the rebellion-inducing history adjustments of forty-three, undoing his work. She shakes her head. And now they want to equate the military to Merridian, and dehumanize the Ortomen. They want us to teach children this, this lie and this hate.

She throws up her hands. How much is this going to undo our efforts to stop Ortomen descendants getting bullied? Our parents and guardians were taught that Ortomens were accepted into our people after being wooed by Pravidian values. Separate origins but one crew, that was healthy. And the military, to our parents, they were just misguided Pravidians that had to step away from their roles, but ultimately were rehabilitated... at least until their inevitable early retirement.

Katelle points towards the blank round wall. I didn't make you watch what they propose now to foul your mood. This is important. She raises her hands. I mean one more revision and we'll be teaching batches the military were working for the ship gods, were always agents of Merridian and Admin Earth. The gods, by the way, were starting to be well embraced by the time whatever happened happened six years in, ninety-two years ago. This from my grandfather's notes, he spoke to enough originals to know even back then his childhood lessons had been 'evolved'. I remember something from one report he'd tapped: 'history is a sacred truth we should strive to know not abandon'. I really like that.

She covers an eye and says gruffly, Merridian the evil. She drops her hand. Used to be Merridian the pirate? With the most popular gyme realm?

Artim starts to nod, but shifts into a shake as he says, Well, there were two Merridians. I mean all five ship gods had a gyme copy for its pantheon, his just didn't rename. He moves closer and grips her thigh. "Okay, it's hard to see the whole picture, but I trust you. I'm trying to imagine our hand of cursed gods being embraced. The curriculum I know has always seemed so clear that they were shunned. But I can accept that what I think I know is a product of a lie, and find an instinctive desire to perpetuate it.

Anyway, gyme history, all half dozen years of it, of what we can know, is a hobby. Artim rubs his arm like the skin doesn't belong, and says rapidly, So gyme's Merridian, my research matches your understanding about his realm's popularity, he really embraced the dark side of invirtu entertainment and dominated the rest of the gyme pantheon in followers. And it wasn't just the preals that were drawn to his monstrous domains. Catching her blank face, he slows. Preals were us, people of the real. Uppers were them, the upmin, the seventy-some thousand uploaded ghosts picked up from Ortome.

Got it. Katelle twists a midnight lock of hair. Funny, guess there really needed to be a word for us when we became the technical minority on the ship. Details have been extra restricted since we became teachers, I don't think any of our students actually know about how many ghosts we picked up. She shifts close and pecks him on the lips. I knew hooking up with you made sense. You're really filling out my early ship history.

Artim