The Ein Particle: The Ein Series, #1

By Koen Martens

One girl discovers what it means to be human in a world ruled by ancient technology in this riveting high tech sci-fi adventure by breakout author Koen Martens

 

Young Tlana, unaware of the totalitarian convictions of those she admires and emulates, is a promising student of human consciousness and devout scholar of the holy texts governing society.

 

But when she is chosen to be this year's sacrificial lamb and die for the common good, cracks appear in her convictions and she flees.

 

She discovers society is not as benign as she once thought. Worse, her only hope is to hide among those she most despises.

 

Ashamed and confused, she reluctantly embraces their cause as her own.

 

With a ruthless leader on her tail and war between continents brewing, can she hold on to her new-found identity? Or will she succumb to the dark and ancient secret that lurks beneath the surface?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Norwegian Blue Publishing
• Release date: Jul 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9789083233475

Book preview

Chapter 1: Tlana

Tlana Sumansiyan was oblivious to the early-summer heat assaulting the Sokoyoka campus apartment building. Five layers of glass, alternately polarised and set in a small frame of maybe thirty by sixty centimetres, filtered the light to a mere shade. Her eyes were shut anyway, her focus inwards, ignoring the tiny student apartment. Within the virtual library, a construct fed into her perceptive neuro-circuitry by her co-ex, she was deeply engrossed in advanced photobionics and the subtle interactions between single-photon emitters, nanotubes, neurons and the quantum effects that bound them all together. This semester, as a secondary major next to her primary subject, medicine, she’d chosen to study the plethora of issues that could arise when those things weren’t deeply attuned to one another. As oblivious as she was to the summer heat, she was equally oblivious to the significance of today’s date until her co-ex brought the name of her best friend to the forefront of her cognition.

As soon as Tlana acknowledged the incoming link by shifting her mental focus to Sel’s image, the three-dimensional workspace rolled up in a whirling vortex, and for a brief moment her view zoomed out to a tornado of stretched and torqued shards of her library whirling around her avatar. She’d done it up a bit, added a centimetre or five to her real-life one metre and sixty-six centimetres and trimmed off some of the fat on her limbs and belly. Not too much for people to notice, but enough to bring her a bit closer to the Ikayotli ideal. Her sleek black hair danced in the turbulent eddies before the perspective snapped back to first person and she found herself in a virtual recreation of Sel’s spacious apartment. Sel herself swirled through the room, voluminous dress sweeping around and behind her in a wake of excitement.

Sel’s avatar – indistinguishable from the real-life version – said with a big smile as she executed a pirouette.

Sel didn’t need to embellish her appearance in the mental virtuality of the co-ex network. She was tall even for an Ikayotli – at least a head taller than Tlana. Her long slender limbs flowed around her as she danced. Her hair, though, she could do something about that. Why on Kuayot she’d ruined her beautiful and naturally straight black hair by putting in artificial curls was beyond Tlana’s comprehension. From below the curly hair, perfect purple eyes with white streaks radiating from the pupils stared at Tlana intently.

Tlana frowned.

Sel laughed.

Easy for her to say. Selkanali Xokoxkuak, heir to the mighty Xokox conglomerate. Her family’s businesses dominated the Ikayotli tech landscape, and with close ties to the Ityan-techmotilistlem, there was no doubt: Sel was Ikayotli through and through. She didn’t have to make an effort to belong. For her, education was merely a hobby, something to pass the time until she would take over her mother’s position at the top of the corporate pyramid. Good grades came for free. Not that Sel wasn’t a good student – she’d make a fine doctor. But for Tlana it was much more than an interest. It was her way in, her fast track to true Ikayotli status. To finally shed her birth-inflicted heritage, rid herself of that burning stigma and become worthy in Yaua’s eyes. And, unlike Sel, she had to work hard to get those same grades.

Sel darted around, waving her left hand at a flat surface textured with moving images.

Tlana focused on the flat surface; the imagery expanded and gained depth, filling all three dimensions. Sel’s apartment morphed into a bird’s-eye perspective of a busy Sokoyoka street, one of many in the urban region inhabited by more than ten million people. The cool air-conditioned atmosphere made way for late-spring humidity. A few straggling mounds of thawing snow were all that was left of the three-metre-thick layer that had covered everything during the winter’s five-month-long reign. The air was pregnant with evaporated meltwater. Nalí vines crept upwards along sandstone columns – roots finding footholds even on the polished surfaces. Atop the pillars rested grand stone arches holding up diamaglass plates, bright sunlight piercing through and bathing the spectacle below in a crisp brightness.

A trio of the Ityan-techmotilistlem’s own guards marched underneath in a triangular formation. On point was the ityakuakl, holding up a banner with bright red symbols against a yellow background. Trailing the ityakuakl left and right were his secondaries, carrying a small wooden chest engraved with the intertwined orbits of the home planet, Kuayot, and its sterile companion, Ouia. Ahead of them, a group of boys, beaming with pride, split the crowd ahead with loud and complex rhythms. Tlana didn’t count them, but she knew there would be thirty-two, as was ordained in the precepts of the Nexatlon.

The older boys up front carried large bass drums, followed by a small army of younger boys beating toms, wood blocks and cowbells. Two older boys were frantically plucking a uni-snare each, followed by more bass drums and an occasional snare. There was a careful mathematical rigour to the apparent chaos, one that was deeply rooted in the Nexatlon. Tlana, attuned to the governing patterns by years of careful study, made out the slow swell and rise of Yaua’s greatness and her creation of the universe. A faster, more nervous rhythm played out on the toms, representing the arrival of the gods – Yaua’s children – on Kuayot and the creation of their offspring, the mortal Ikayotli. More subtle rhythmic variations completed the compendium of tales that defined the precepts of the Nexatlon.

Countless people drawn from apartments and shops lining the covered boulevard cheered them on. Their faces were painted with joy, perhaps for some even ecstasy. Many were dancing to the beats, while others pointed towards the procession and engaged in animated conversations with those around them. Some had brought drums of their own, adding yet more complexity to the syncopating layers of rhythm. Tlana longed to be among them. Contagious energy bubbled up through her body, urging her to leave her stuffy student flat.

Sel said, a teasing smile seeping through with the words.

Tlana exclaimed. Blasphemy . Sel didn’t mean to, of course, but to suggest that the rhythmic perfection of the procession’s accompaniment be soiled by the melodic music of primitives was an offence to Yaua. One of these days, her frivolous attitude to the Nexatlon would come back to bite her. Or maybe not. Not with her ancestral history. Tlana shrugged away the dark sentiment by soaking up the joy of the people in the streets.

Their perspective shifted, panning across ornately decorated shop windows. An intricate tapestry depicted the story of the gods setting foot on Kuayot for the first time and claiming the world for their offspring. The next shop had an elaborate animatronic diorama of Tlauak, Yaua’s youngest daughter, ever the curious one, emerging from a shining beacon of light floating above the barren landscape of the mid-summer northern continent. Her siblings followed in her footsteps, meandering about in wonder. The feed panned to focus on a café sporting a wonderful drawing of the Ikayotli’s creation, their thin figures stick-like caricatures. The feed lingered on an entertainment store for a moment, projecting a life-sized and almost comical video of the Ikayotli meeting the Pakatli – squat and ugly little creatures scampering about, bumping into each other and getting in the way of the graceful Ikayotli. At least, that was what Tlana always imagined she saw.

The view completed its rotation towards the rear of the caravan, swooping over a large banner hanging from the next building on which was printed a reproduction of a first-millennium painting, famous for its depiction of the rough-hewn Sólsking arriving on the western shores of Ikayot. Their vessels – ancient wooden sailing ships with bows sculpted into the likeness of skulls, ghostly apparitions and faces contorted in expressions of unspeakable agony – pierced through the darkness of night. The eery light from the cabins on their sterns projected out over the foaming waves of the Tlaxm Sea, highlighting the rough waters. The bloodthirsty people from Gíslandis, armed to the teeth with bludgeons, knives and halberds, stood defiantly on deck, their eyes filled with a lust for murder.

Tlana shuddered.

Sel’s disembodied voice asked. The excitement in her voice was palpable.

Tlana peered towards the side of the street, but before she spotted the café Sel was referring to, the feed swung to a raised platform trailing the three front men. It was held up by six more of the Ityan-techmotilistlem’s private guards. A canopy, elaborately decorated with flowing yellow fabric, covered the akmo amakayak’s seat, a luxurious sofa the same subdued colour as the curtains and so far unoccupied. Following the platform was another band of boys beating drums. Tlana’s gaze, however, lingered on the little alley branching off from the main thoroughfare through which the parade proceeded.

Tlana opened her eyes and the immersive experience faded to the periphery of her conscience.

Eager to win her mentor’s approval and prove herself worthy of becoming a true techmotilistlem, she had forgotten all about today. It was the first day of the Kualoa – a week of celebrations ending on New Year’s Day with the biggest event on the Ikayotli calendar: the launch of the akmo amakayak. Today, on the first of those seven days, the procession called at the door of the one chosen by Yaua to travel to her home and plead for mercy. That lucky soul, the akmo amakayak, would take their seat under the yellow canopy, starting their journey to the akmo amakayak’s temple in Xin to prepare for the even longer journey to meet the mother of all gods in her home, the planet Ouia, and convince her to spare the Ikayotli from death and destruction for another year.

Tlana leaped up and rushed to don her violet kenaj, the techmotilistlem’s robe, to show the world that she was a student of the Nexatlon and divine knowledge. If she hurried, she could catch up with the approaching procession downstairs. The noise of the drums outside was swelling to a crescendo, audible even through the five panes of glass in her tiny window. She hastily threw her arms through the flaring sleeves of the robe and was straightening the tight-fitting fabric around her waist when she spotted a stain level with her collarbone. That would not do. Not on a day like today.

Sel was shrieking something through the co-ex link, but Tlana wasn’t paying attention in her hurry to squirm out of the soiled garment. She threw it on the bed and reached inside the closet for her clean one. Quicker now, she pulled it over her body and checked herself in the mirror. Perfect. Just a small adjustment here and a tug there. The clean kenaj fitted tight around her chest and abdomen, the flaring sleeves just the right length for her arms. She grabbed her shoes and was adjusting the oversized hood of the mantle that covered her shoulders when there came three loud knocks on the door.

Tying the laces, she focused on Sel’s voice again.

<… door. Are you hearing me?> Sel asked hysterically.

Tlana closed the link. Whoever it was at the door, she’d send them away promptly. The Kualoa procession was passing through their street, for Yaua’s sake.

She imagined the door open. Her co-ex relayed the command and the door whooshed sideways, revealing a man, arms crossed in front of his chest. No, not a man. In front of her door, standing in her hallway, was the ityakuakl, the leader of the procession – flanked by his two comrades holding the wooden chest. He bowed and kneeled. The sound of beaten drums was deafening; the boys were out of sight but surely nearby in the hallway. The secondaries lowered the chest, greeted her with crossed arms and kneeled beside the ityakuakl. He opened the chest and took out the kenaj – the same pastel yellow as the Ityan-techmotilistlem’s.

Tlana let the garment fall into her outstretched arms and staggered back, stammering, ‘I … I … a moment.’ The door whooshed shut. It was her. She was the akmo amakayak. Seven days from now, she would be launched towards Ouia, home of the gods, to meet the mother of all the gods. To meet Yaua. To give her life so that all the Ikayotli would be spared for another year and crops would flourish, not wilt. So that the Ikayotli would prosper for one more year.

She should be proud, elated. To be chosen was the highest praise an Ikayotli could ever get. Cold fingers of dread closed around her neck. Panic settled in her chest like a lump of wet sand, pushing down on her diaphragm. She forced out shallow breaths and paced from wall to wall and back again, the room becoming smaller and smaller.

Years of dedication to Yaua – the mother of the gods. Countless afternoons spent in the neighbourhood temple instead of outside, playing with her peers. The struggle against pure-bred Ikayotli who weren’t half as well versed in the Nexatlon as she was yet looked down on her – literally as well as figuratively. All of that she endured to become worthy, but now that it was presented to her on a platter, all she could think was, I don’t want to die .

She rushed into the bathroom and pushed against the fire escape. The narrow door fell back, free of the one-metre-thick wall, and slid sideways. A wall of hot, humid air hit her in the face, but she pushed through the narrow opening and into the equally narrow walkway. Opaque cladding, there to keep out snow, occluded the escape route from view. She stumbled down the steps, descending past the street-level exit and into the underground escape tunnel. She hadn’t been down here in ages, but found her way as if it had been just yesterday, the template design of the subterranean network imprinted on her mind. There was the service entrance. Out of breath, she smashed against the door, grabbing for the handle.

Pointless . It was all pointless. They’d know exactly where she was at any moment, her co-ex constantly uploading her location down to the millimetre with no possibility of disabling the routines responsible. Regardless, her body propelled her forward, drawn to a safe place she remembered without effort.

Descending the rough-hewn stairs worn down by centuries of use and neglect, she went deeper and deeper. She and her sister used to roam these tunnels, explore their extents and find all kinds of interesting and forgotten places, much to the chagrin of her parents, who would chide them for getting out of reach of the co-ex network.

They’d take blankets, candles, and pretend it was the Ityan-techmotilistlem’s lair, or a spaceship or castle. They’d been so close, back then. But as they’d grown up, they grew apart. Their paths had diverged radically. So much so that Tlana had almost forgotten she had a sister. Yet, thinking of her now, she longed to talk, touch hands, be together again.

She shook her head violently, dispelling the sentiment.

The abandoned maintenance room of their childhood didn’t look like much more than a decrepit and forgotten pit, smaller than she remembered. She sat down cross-legged on the bare concrete, hiding between discarded and rusty equipment. The faint illumination of a fading glow panel cast indistinct shadows. She pulled up her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs, shivering, listening to distant sounds of autonomous service vehicles trundling through tunnels, carrying supplies this way and waste that way.

By now, the guards would have discovered her apartment was empty. The world would know that the unthinkable had happened. That the akmo amakayak had flaunted Yaua’s will, had run away, cowardly. Never in the past thousand years had this happened (and she would know; it would have been written down in the Nexatlon, and she knew the Nexatlon by heart).

What would her parents think? Would they be worried? Ashamed? Oh, she could only imagine the scorn that would be theirs for raising a heretic. And her sister, Kara? She would probably be proud. And amused, perhaps, for Tlana was always pretending to be the perfect Ikayotli, emulating their ways and bowing to their every request, while Kara embraced her Pakatli heritage. And look at Tlana now, huddled up in a dank cellar giving the Ityan-techmotilistlem the finger. Oh, what had she done? Could she ever leave this cellar, face the world with her head bowed in shame? Or should she just stay here and die?

Barking dogs startled her. How long had it been? They were coming for her. She could just sit and wait. But no, she had no desire to be apprehended. She ran, no longer fleeing death. She ran from a fate much worse than that.

Away from the approaching noise, she ran until she emerged from a disused exit at the outskirts of the outermost suburbs. And then she ran into the woods, climbing rocky hillsides rising towards the Chiui mountains. Treacherous patches of ice hidden beneath watery snow slowed her down, sending her sprawling on all fours. She became more careful. The evaporating meltwater congealed in dense clouds overhead, laden with the potential for lightning and thunderstorms. It was hard to make out where she was putting her feet. And throughout, the dogs barked in the distance.

She’d kept them at bay so far, having the advantage down in the tunnels. But here, out in the dense woods? She didn’t know left from right, and without the rigid layout of city streets, she lost all sense of direction and distance.

Pines reached up to the sky, their tops swaying in the buffeting wind. Thunder cracked, releasing a torrent of freezing rain, lubricating the already slippery moss. Avoiding sharp rocks and destabilising boulders, she kept climbing, guided – no, driven – by the sound of dogs. She changed direction by ear, the dogs louder to her left, which meant she was running parallel to them rather than away.

The sky lit up and lightning screamed through the air, sending forth an explosion of sound as superheated air was propelled away from electricity’s path at breakneck velocity. The bolt hit not more than twenty metres from her current location, sending forth the sound of splitting wood and crashing branches hitting the forest floor. She had to jump aside to avoid being knocked over by falling debris.

She stopped running and gasped in wet mouthfuls of breath, her gaze darting over the pandemonium around her. This was madness. She needed to find cover. Through the howling wind, though, she thought she could still hear the dogs. Faintly now, retreating. But she couldn’t take any chances. She picked up her pace again, forcing herself through the hurt in her legs and the stabs in her lungs.

Another bolt shot forth from the dark clouds. There was no sound, no debris. This time, there was only the bright light, the smell of ozone and freshly cut wood and burning hair, and then there was nothing.

Chapter 2: The Ityan-techmotilistlem

The Ityante, through her sister’s eyes, inspected her own appearance closely. It was like looking in a mirror, her perfectly symmetrical twenty-seven-year-old body reflected in an invisible barrier of glass and polished metal. She raised her hand to dispel the illusion. Sometimes, she forgot who was looking at whom. She was getting old.

Buried deep in the palace around which the capital – Xin – had sprawled to its current size of twenty-three million inhabitants, the stateroom was lit by bright panels mounted in shallow alcoves along the circumference. Daylight from outside fed into the panels through fibre-optic conduits to be diffused by a lattice of fine crystals scattering streams of photons throughout the room. The light reflected off polished sandstone walls, diminishing the sharp edge of the sun’s glare to a soft and warm yellow glow.

The Ityante’s periwinkle eyes bored into her sister’s, identical down to the lighter shade around the pupil fading to a dark aubergine purple near the edge of the iris. She straightened her back, stretched out her long slender neck and let her sleek black hair fall over her shoulders. At two metres and six centimetres, there weren’t many taller than them. And if there were, she’d make sure an unfortunate accident befell them.

‘Go now,’ she said aloud, even though there was no need to speak. Their minds were tightly attuned and privy to the same information from the sensor network embedded in the palace’s walls, their co-exes fusing the external input with their own perception, extending their cognitive reach throughout the palace. Through it she – they – sensed the aakani’s approach.

Her sister turned and went through a hidden door to their private quarters. As the door hissed shut, she focused on the sensors and the aakani marching through the wide corridor, experiencing the audio-visual feed as if she was right there with him. The sound of his boots echoed off walls, the same subdued yellow as the stateroom’s, but these were unpolished, retaining their natural texture and lending the scene a somewhat medieval quality. The Ityante squared her shoulders and willed the main entrance open.

The aakani paused in the doorway, arms crossed diagonally in front of his chest, bowing ever so slightly. His thundering voice rolled through the stateroom, disturbing the solemn silence. ‘We had her. She was unconscious, sprawled out on the forest floor. And all you ask of us is to check that she is alive and then leave her to wake up and run off again. Are you losing your sharpness, Ityante?’

From anyone else, such disregard for ceremony would be considered blasphemy, good for a one-way ticket to the barren islands of the Miki archipelago. But she did not let so much as a frown disturb her expressionless face. She motioned for the aakani to sit at the large wooden table. The surface was polished as smooth as the walls, not a blemish marring the teak. She took her own seat – not exactly a throne, but the ornately carved wooden chair at the head of the table was raised on a dais. The soft yellow padding matched the subdued pastel of her kenaj. Ostensibly thousands of years old, that chair, yet – as was the case for many things in the palace – not everything was as it seemed.

She looked down on the aakani. While taller than the average Ikayotli male, he was still a head shorter than the Ityante. His hair was as black as hers, but cropped and parted sideways on the left. His desert-camouflage fatigues bulged over muscled limbs. A loose-fitting tabard – the darker yellow of the Ityante’s own security forces – covered his torso and upper legs. Embroidered on the chest in bright red thread were the interlocking elliptical orbits of Kuayot and Ouia. The aakani averted his gaze and shifted in his seat, pretending to arrange his tabard.

Good . The man still knows his place , the Ityante observed. ‘It is of no consequence,’ she said, her voice cold and uninflected, hiding amusement at the confusion on the aakani’s face. Still, even the aakani would know something was different this year. He was smart, this one, for a male.

The girl wasn’t the first to attempt escape. The lightning had been unfortunate, but even without the co-ex pinging the network with her location they’d been able to track the akmo amakayak all the way through the tunnels and the forest. And if that had taken too long, they would have found a replacement. Another girl that looked just like her, at least from a distance. They’d send that one up on the rocket, kill the other one later. While a satisfactory outcome, and one she had employed many times in the – she consulted her cohort for the exact number – nine hundred and fourteen Kualoas she had overseen, this one was special.

She supposed she would have to explain her plans for this year’s akmo amakayak to the aakani. Explain in primitive and imprecise verbal utterances. Careful not to let her stone-faced appearance reveal her annoyance, she gathered her vocabulary. It was so much more efficient with her sisters; their brain patterns and activity synchronised back and forth in real time. Never a need to explain, to discuss, to convince. They always reached the same conclusion at the same time, having exactly the same thoughts as the others, without the need for dialogue.

If only she could subsume the populace into that same union, amalgamating the individual subjects into a giant superorganism. Imagine the intellect that would be born out of such an endeavour. It wasn’t for lack of trying that that supermind was still beyond reach. She and her sisters had attempted to augment the co-ex’s architecture. They’d tried again and again, tweaking the procedures, modifying the filtering algorithms, ruining one disposable Ikayotli mind after another, for centuries on end. Only close siblings, twins mostly and those like herself, formed a compatible match. Others, they simply went insane.

And that was why she had to make do with individuals having independent thought, acting in ways that not always benefitted Ikayotli supremacy. That was why there were still places where the Ikayotli did not rule, where the vermin were allowed to fester. And that was why she was talking with the aakani right now, forced to explain her machinations in crude and ambiguous language. Forced to deal with the aakani’s idiosyncrasies and abhorrent tendencies.

The aakani cleared his throat. ‘Ityante?’ he asked, his tone on the verge of commanding.

None other than the aakani dared take such liberties in the presence of the Ityante. On some level, she appreciated his directness. The impatience, though. That was getting tiresome. She tilted her head in his direction, intensifying her glare.

‘It is of no consequence,’ the Ityante repeated, drawing out each word. ‘You have her location?’

‘Yes, Ityante, of course.’ The aakani radiated indignation, but the Ityante saw it for the act it was. ‘I have my men stationed nearby, watching her night and day.’

‘She’s in hiding?’ the Ityante asked, knowing full well that was exactly what the girl, Julana, would be doing. She was an open book to the Ityante. Out of all the prospective akmo amakayaks suggested to her, this one had shown the most promise. A deep copy of her brain patterns, scrutinised by the most sophisticated algorithms at the Ityante’s disposal, described her personality like a detailed map. Every character trait, every inclination, it was all there for her and her sisters to read. The girl was perfect.

‘Yes, Ityante.’ The aakani nodded briefly.

‘Then all is going according to plan, Aakani.’ She allowed herself a brief moment of private entertainment at the frustration apparent on the aakani’s face while keeping hers composed. ‘I can see there is something else on your mind. Speak up.’

‘Yes, Ityante.’ The aakani sighed. ‘The situation at Sokoyoka Unitemplex. Have we allowed it to go on for too long? Students are openly engaging in discussions of Pakatli philosophy, sharing copies of the Pak Matuwi without restraint.’

Ah yes, the Pakatli – or the Paghahan as they were once called – and their Pak Matuwi, the book of reflection. Silly creatures. Despite their submission to Ikayotli superiority two millennia ago, they had clung to their cultural oddities, defying ordinances that forbade the existence of their little sect and the performance of their rituals.

‘Yes, Aakani, I agree,’ she said, pretending to concede to the aakani’s point. ‘It is utterly unacceptable. Something needs to be done.’

The aakani slammed a fist on the table. ‘You’re bloody right something needs to be done! Polygamy, same-sex relations. They shy away from nothing. And one of your own techmotilistlem, a chamatl nonetheless, is encouraging them. It’s time we take the man down, show those degenerates that their liberal tendencies cannot be tolerated,’ he fumed.

‘Now, now, Aakani,’ the Ityante said. ‘The chama-techmotilistlem you are referring to is a wise scholar. Not only does he possess a knowledge of the Nexatlon that puts yours to shame, but he is also one of the most brilliant multidisciplinary techmotilistlem we have. He has served us well. And he hasn’t been seen to participate in those relationships, has he, despite our intensive monitoring? Nor has he told his students to engage in said practices, has he?’

‘No. But Ityante, the man is a cancer, corrupting our youth with vile concepts. He has to be eliminated. The third precept of the Aktli—’

‘The third precept of the Aktli interpretation,’ the Ityante said. ‘The Ityan-techmotilistlem, daughter of the gods, direct descendant of the mother of all gods, shall commune with Yaua and shall relay her directives to which the Ikayotli shall be bound. This is the Ityan-techmotilistlem’s duty. And the aakani shall be the Ityan-techmotilistlem’s iron fist, shedding the blood of those who defy Yaua’s will. This is the aakani’s duty. I have read the chronicles, Aakani. I have read every word my revered ancestor, the late Ityan-techmotilistlem Aktli,