Brista, 10 Shiaa, 4392, Orthodox calendar;
Thursday, 15 May 2007, Native regional reckoning
New Orleans, Gamia Province, American Sector
It wasn't easy to study, but he managed it somehow.
All that insanity with Jyslin had completely ruined a day's studying, and again, if it wasn't for his habit of recording his classes, he'd be behind. Getting behind when he had seven classes was not a good thing. He felt lucky that she didn't follow him home, but then again, she was probably still in the Plaid trying to find him. It was only about six, and he knew that when it got dark and curfew kicked in, she'd know where to find him.
He had that test in Advanced Plasma Fundamentals tomorrow, but he felt ready for it. They were studying conduits and PPG's in a little more detail, and anything involving plasma interested him enough to study well ahead. Plasma conduit was made of crystallized silicon, and it was actually rather pretty. It looked like hollow tubes of glass, but surprisingly tough, and the high-energy plasma was carried inside. Silicon conduit could carry any kind of phased plasma, but not plasma in its raw state. That was the clever little trick the Faey had discovered, which was the only reason they could use plasma as a power source. They phased the plasma into different states, and when so phased and set up that the individual phases of it opposed one another, it made it safe. Just like how humans had learned to use three-phase electricity, the Faey used multiple phases of plasma. But it worked much differently, for they phased plasma into alternate states of material existence, spreading out its energy into many different quantum states. That was called metaphased plasma, and it was why plasma could flow in a glass tube and not be ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit. They had other types of phasing techniques, such as interphased, hyperphased, and polarity phased. Interphased plasma was used to power spatial drives, since metaphased plasma distorted the system. Hyperphased plasma was only mentioned but not explained, because it was a military application, used to make the plasma torpedoes fired from their battleships. Polarity phased plasma was very low-energy and worked very well in microscopic applications, and was what powered virtually all very small devices.
All this plasma was generated by the PPG, the Plasma Power Generator, and it itself was an amazing creation of ingenuity. He'd read the history of the device, and it showed the boundary from where the Faey were limited to their own star system, the Draconis system on earth charts, and when they were released to conquer and rule other planets. The PPG was, literally, a miniature sun. That's exactly what it was. The Faey had technology that affected space itself, allowing them to stretch it, pull it, even tear holes in it, and that was the technology that allowed them to build the PPG. Inside the device was a "bubble" of stretched space, and inside that bubble of stretched space, isolated from the rest of space by the boundaries of its bubble, was a hot nuclear fusion reaction. Just like the nuclear fusion that took place in stars, that's what was going on inside a PPG. Within the bubble were temperatures approaching fifteen thousand degrees Fahrenheit, but because it was in that isolated bubble of manipulated space, the heat and radiation could not escape it. The bubble was breached in two places so plasma could be drawn out of it, then be fed back into it after it completed its circuit. A PPG's size and power rating varied, and that affected its shelf life. The PPG in the cutter he'd borrowed had a shelf life of about a year. After a year, the material in the PPG's bubble would fuse into an iron core, and then the PPG would exhaust itself and stop working. It had a battery of sorts that kept the bubble intact until the PPG could be serviced, for the iron core of a spent PPG was larger than the PPG itself. If the bubble broke down, that volume would return to normal space, and make the PPG literally explode as something larger than itself suddenly occupied its fusion chamber. The device had a couple of very serious cascading safeguards to prevent a bubble breach when the device was fusing, because a breach would cause a cataclysmic fusion-induced explosion that would be about as powerful as five hundred Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs. The bubble, or core as it was called, could be ejected from the PPG, sent through a micro-wormhole and out into deep space, and the PPG had protocols for doing that if it detected a disastrous breakdown in progress. It had several other conditional protocols that would lead to a core ejection, such as readings that went over certain limits or a disruption in the bubble integrity. The PPG could eject the core before a tear in the bubble led to a fusion explosion, but the backlash fed back through the tear and tended to destroy everything within ten feet of a damaged PPG.
Because of the danger a breached PPG could pose, they were heavily protected in the devices in which they were installed. They were always surrounded by a metal called vandirium, a Faey alloy that was about a hundred times stronger than titanium, armor to protect against some kind of catastrophic breach. Faey armor was made out of a variation of vandirium alloy that was even stronger, but was more expensive to produce.
It was funny that cost should even matter, but it did. The Faey had a good grasp on molecular-level physics, and that had led to the construction of matter replicators. But the problem with them was that they could only produce materials in base elements, and they couldn't replicate any element heavier than the metal Palladium. Silver, the next element on the table, could not be replicated, nor could gold or many of the metals that the Faey used to construct armor and vessels. It was even funnier that the human table of the elements was similar to the Faey version. They had many, many more elements on their table than the human table, different variations of known elements because of the number of neutrons in the nucleus, but it was still organizationally similar.
That was why they Faey needed Earth for farming, because they couldn't replicate food. It was also why silver and gold were valuable to the Faey. It was also why they didn't give their occupational forces the real armor that they equipped their soldiers with. He'd seen some on CivNet somewhere, powered armor with flight packs, integrated weapons in the arms instead of external weapons they had to carry. That armor was much more expensive, its materials couldn't be replicated, so they'd equipped their occupational forces with only the weapons and armor they needed to keep the technologically backwards humans in check. Their weapons, well, those were the real deal. Faey used tiny bursts of high-energy metaphased plasma as their primary weapon, which exploded on contact with solid matter and also tended to burn through as it penetrated. The result was like an explosive bullet, which punched into a target then detonated. Living things shot by a metaphased plasma weapon tended to explode from the inside out when blood vaporized from the heat and that steam applied pressure to the flesh, aggravating the explosive contact the plasma had with a much cooler material. The result was a charge of metaphased plasma only two millimeters thick could leave a hole nearly a foot across. It was quite gruesome; even a graze could blow a limb off the body. What made them very nasty was that the fact that because they existed in multiple quantum states, it allowed most of the energy of the blast to pass through coherent energy shields. Any plasma state that matched the state of the shield would be stopped, but the remaining energy of the weapon would pass through and hit what it protected. The Faey employed shields on their warships, but the shields on ships they attacked would be useless.
CivNet was like the human internet…someone with enough patience could find just about anything. It was all in Faey, and he didn't speak or read the language, but his panel could translate everything into English, so it made it legible. He'd found the technical specs for plasma pistols and rifles on CivNet, as well as the internal technical schematics for a PPG. Given those, and the materials, he could build his own plasma weapon, and he had this wild idea about secretly building a stockpile of weapons and using them to try to overthrow the Faey, but it was a useless dream, and he knew it. Faey telepathy would crush any attempt before it got started. He hadn't heard anything about it, but he was certain that some other student out there had had the same idea and had tried it, but been found out and stopped before he got off the ground.
That damn telepathy. It just kept coming back and coming back and coming back. Without that, the Faey would not have such an easy time of it here on Earth. It made them very relaxed about their new vassals, almost arrogantly dismissive of them, because what could they do? They sent humans to school to learn Faey technology, because what could they do? They didn't censor anything, not even the internet, because what could people do? They could think about revolt and object to the Faey all they wanted, but the instant they tried to do anything about it, the Faey would simply swoop in, use telepathy to root out the plot, and crush it before it could even get started. And people caught trying to overthrow the system weren't killed, they were "reprogrammed" by Faey telepathic specialists, turned into good little loyal subjects of her Imperial Majesty, the Empress Dahnai. Why kill a good asset of the Imperium when you could simply use telepathic reprogramming to make him a lapdog?
To Jason, death was better. To be reprogrammed like that, to do what they wanted him to do, but he felt that somehow, deep inside himself, to know what they had done to him…that was the ultimate torture.
He leaned back in his chair and looked at the clock. Six fifteen. Curfew was at nine, when all humans had to be off the streets or have a pass to move about…which were admittedly easy to get. All you had to do was call the Population Control Center and tell them you had to go out. You didn't even have to give a reason. Tell them you're going out, they send you a pass through your vidlink that you copy onto paper, and then you go. The curfew was installed more to rein in gangs of youths that liked to vandalize things more than anything else, and the news said that it'd probably be lifted next month. Jason couldn't do that, of course. He didn't have a vidlink. He was a student, and he had a panel, which served as everything, including a vidlink. He'd download the pass to his panel and print it out from there. His panel was everything; computer, organizer, vidlink all rolled into one. Besides, in his tiny, cramped room, he didn't have the space for a vidlink. Those things were about the size of an old human personal computer, complete with a hard keyboard, and if he had one on his desk, he wouldn't have room for anything else. Vidlinks did about everything a phone and personal computer did, and everyone got one, even farm workers in their little rooms at their farmhouses. There were still stand-alone cell phones, tied to the same system that ran the vidlinks, itself part of CivNet, but one had to buy a phone, where vidlinks were issued to people free of charge. It was just one of the little things that humans didn't grumble too much about when it came to the Faey.
Bored, he paused studying to surf through CivNet's news, which was of course biased and inflamed. There was only one news service, INN, the Imperial News Network, and it was but the mouthpiece of the Empress. But, he had to admit, they did cover what they considered news rather thoroughly. They just didn't openly question her Majesty's policies or decisions. He switched over to pan-empire, the real Faey news, where a blond Faey sat behind a desk, wearing a strange white robe, and talked in Faey about the news of the Imperium while three-dimensional holograms showed beside her. Earth even showed up in these broadcasts from time to time, such as last week, when an earthquake had rocked California. That made the major news, and they showed holos of Faey and human workers cleaning everything up.
Nothing he could make out. They showed images of some other planet somewhere where a storm had done damage to a seaside town-a green ocean, weird, that was-and other images that made little sense to him. Without the ability to speak Faey, it really would be a string of unconnected pictures, nothing more.
Wait, here was something. The Faey were at war with some other race, he knew that, and they were showing images of damage to a battle fleet that must have just returned from combat. They put up statistics over the images, probably how many were killed, how many of the other side were killed, probably none of it accurate, that sort of thing. He did remember seeing a picture of one of those people, big bipedal red-scaled reptilian things that looked pretty nasty, and he wondered how they stacked up against the Faey. He could imagine it now…big reptilian monsters that looked vaguely like guys in Godzilla suits fighting an army of dainty little female elves with big fuckin' guns.
Now that was funny.
Not that it was right to trivialize war, but if they were fighting the Faey, then maybe he should toast them the next time he had a beer with Tim.
There was no knock at the door. It opened, and Jyslin came bursting through, again out of her armor. He glanced at her absently, then went back to watching his panel screen. Today she had on a black tank-top that showed off her generous chest and a pair of curve-hugging gray shorts, with running shoes on her feet. Her skin was shiny with sweat; she must have been working out. He could smell her sweat, and found that it was a strange spicy-musky smell that was oddly appealing. Damn Faey, even their sweat smelled good. "Well?" she said hotly.
"Well what?" he countered evenly, not bothering to look at her again.
"How did you do it?" she demanded.
"You think I'm going to tell you that?" he asked with a scoff. "Please."
He expected her to rant at him or shout, but she instead laughed. "Fair enough," she said generously, then closed the door behind her. "I thought you had a test tomorrow."
"I do," he answered. "I'm taking a break."
"Watching the news, huh?" she noted, looking over his shoulder. "Damn, the skaa did some damage this time."
"Skaa?"
"The reptilians we're fighting at the moment," she answered. "On the other side of the empire. We're in a dispute with them over a couple of star systems. The fighting's more or less contained to battles inside the disputed territory. Neither side wants an open war."
"Why is that?"
"Our technology is better, but they're like uncountable," she replied. "I think their home planet has something like ten trillion people on it. They can put an army on a planet fifty times bigger than anyone else and win by sheer force of numbers." She looked at him. "Wait, why are you being nice to me?" she demanded.
"Because you're not acting like an asshole," he answered honestly.
She laughed. "Will you go out with me?"
"No."
"Well, what good does it do then?" she asked with a laugh and a wink. "I didn't know you speak Faey."
"I don't. But you can figure some things out if you're patient enough to try."
"Want to learn?" she offered.
"I don't have time for language lessons."
"Who said I'd teach you the long way? It'll take about five minutes."
He realized immediately what she meant. Telepathic instruction. The Faey didn't do it to humans in school because of certain ways things worked with their power. They could use it to implant knowledge, like history or language or something like that, pure data, but not any information that required the use of motor control. It had to do with the way the brain worked, and it was too complicated for him to understand. All he knew was that was why the Faey had to teach people things the same way that the humans did. They couldn't just "zap" that information into people's heads-well, they could, but it really wouldn't do much good, because they couldn't really use what they were taught without practice, and having the knowledge to do something without having the skill to perform the task was an exceedingly dangerous combination. To prevent cataclysmic accidents, they didn't teach any way other than the old-fashioned way. She could teach him Faey with telepathy, because it was purely a mental activity. It didn't require anything other than thinking, and those were the only things that Faey could implant via telepathic instruction. If she taught him Faey, he'd be able to understand it fine, but he'd have to practice making those sounds to speak it, and practice to learn how to write it or type in it. Those were motor functions, and they had to be practiced until perfected.
"No," he said adamantly. "I'll learn it the way I learn everything else. You're not putting your hooks in my head, Jyslin."
"We'll see," she said with a wink. "I'll bet you fifty credits you'll be speaking Faey by next Friday."
"Not even."
"Easy money for me," she announced.
"I never said I'd take the bet. I don't gamble."
"Be glad you're not in the military, then," she laughed.
"My father was."
"Oh? What did he do?"
"He was a fighter pilot," he answered, backing out of the Faey news broadcast and returning to his homework.
"It must be something to fly one of those hydrocarbon engine planes," she mused. "No control at all. It would be scary." She looked at him. "Almost any pilot with kids teaches the kids to fly."
He nodded. "Got my conditional pilot's license when I was twelve," he affirmed. "Got my unconditional license at sixteen, just a month before my father died. It made him very happy to see me get it, and about that time, I'd do anything to make my father happy."
"He was sick?"
He nodded. "Cancer."
"It's too bad we didn't get here sooner. We could have cured him."
"If you'd have gotten here when he was still alive, you would have had to shoot him out of the sky," he said bluntly. "My dad wouldn't have accepted the subjugation. He would have fought, no matter what the odds."
"Sounds like a spunky fellow."
For some reason, Jason took exceptional offense to the word spunky. "I think it's time for you to leave," he said stiffly.
"Fine, but now I have the plan for our second date," she told him. "We're going flying in one of those prop planes they have sitting out at the lakeside airport."
"Keep dreaming."
"It's no dream," she said, quite seriously. She grabbed the neckline of her tank top and fanned herself absently. "I need to go clean up. I'll swing by later and see how you're doing."
"Don't bother," he said in a growling tone.
"Then I'll see you tomorrow after I get off duty," she said easily, opening the door, stepping through, then turning around and looking at him. "Then again, I'll know what's going on. Lyn and Bryn will be escorting you tomorrow. They'll keep in touch. See you later," she said with a wink, then she closed the door.
"That's what you think," he said in a low, dangerous tone, glancing at the little cord sticking out from under his bed. He already had their little surprise ready and waiting.
He grumbled a little, still feeling a tad stung by her flippant remark about his beloved father, then got back to studying.
Lyn and Bryn were willowy raven-haired sisters, identical twins, who had managed to stay together from their conscription on. They were very patient, clever, and methodical women. They served as the squad's logical reasoning, offering cool, sensible advice in stressful situations, and their powerful mental bond, the kind of bond only twins could enjoy, gave them an awesome range of telepathic contact when they were separated. This strong bond and the insane range it gave them was a useful tactical advantage in combat, allowing for uninterceptible communications between two elements of the squad when they split up. They were careful, almost timidly cautious women who never blundered into anything without thinking it through, and weren't the kind of women who fell for stupid, inane little traps.
Except for today.
What made it even more embarrassing for them was that they'd been warned about Jason. They'd been there last night when he vanished from the Plaid, and they were rather impressed with his ability to foil an entire Marine squad. Jyslin and Maya had specifically warned them that Jason was a very clever and crafty man, and he knew that they were going to be out there waiting for him. She even went so far as to specifically warn them that he might have a little surprise waiting for them when he left his dorm, something to discourage pursuit.
But, like most Faey, when they got curious about something, they absolutely had to satisfy that curiosity. It was a racial trait, very nearly a racial liability, both one of the reasons they were so technologically advanced and a reason they'd gotten into a fair number of wars that could have been avoided if they'd just minded their own business.
What got their curiosity was a little silver egg that was sitting on the stoop of the dorm's main entrance. It was on a little metal stand, obviously put there deliberately, just sitting on the top landing of the steps waiting. The humans simply stepped around the egg, as if it was supposed to be there, which made it even more unusual. Lyn and Bryn got out of their hovercar-century old piece of junk, why couldn't they bring in some modern equipment!-and that little egg immediately got their attention. It just sat there, unclaimed, untouched, and completely ignored by the humans who stepped around it as they filed out to go to school.
"What is that?" Lyn asked a short brunette female human as she rushed out, obviously running late.
"Dunno, there's a note on the board not to touch it," she answered quickly and honestly. "It's probably an experiment someone's doing."
Lyn let the girl go, and the twin Marines regarded the egg with curiosity.
Should we? Bryn asked mentally. They almost never spoke when they communicated with one another.
It's probably a trap, Lyn returned.
We have to go get Jyslin's beaux anyway. Let's just take a look at it as we go by. We don't have to touch it.
We'd best not. I still say it's a trap.
I think so too, but the humans got very close to it and nothing happened. So long as we don't get any closer to it than they did, we should be alright.
Lyn furrowed her brow. That's a good point. Alright, but we don't touch.
Lyn and Bryn went up the steps, their boots clacking on the concrete, and stooped over a little to inspect the egg, careful not to get too close to it. It was a featureless, perfectly smooth egg of a shiny metal, probably refined chromium or hardened mercury. Their reflections in the egg were distorted by its curvature, making them both look like they had eyes or noses ten times bigger than the rest of their faces.
"Good morning," came a steady, almost amused call from the street, by their car. The turned and looked and saw the human Jyslin had set them on, the student Jason. How had he gotten out of the building without them seeing it? There was only one entrance to the dorm! He was in a simple white tee shirt with no decoration, a blue denim short-sleeved shirt worn unbuttoned over the tee shirt, faded jeans, and ragged old sneakers. He had his brown backpack slung over one shoulder, and the other hand held a small, featureless little device with a single flashing red button on its face. With a flick of his thumb, he pressed that button.
Bedlam!
Something smashed into them from behind, throwing them forward. Both of them tried to put their hands up to protect their faces from being planted in the sidewalk, but something grabbed hold of them and prevented them from reaching the bottom of the steps. Both Lyn and Bryn tried to move, but found that they were stuck fast in something!
Lyn's head wasn't stuck in whatever it was, so she turned and looked behind them. It was crash foam, a special foam that they used in vehicles that, on trigger from a sensor, erupted out and filled the volume of a vehicle's cavity, then instantly hardened into a soft solid to restrict the passengers. The result was a springy, elastic material that absorbed shock and protected the occupants of a crashing vehicle from suffering serious injury, but also stuck fast to anything it was touching as it hardened, as securely as any glue, nearly as securely as molecular annealing. The foam was supposed to decay five seconds after the vehicle came to a stop, to allow the occupants to get out, but then Lyn remembered that it was decayed by a second device that deployed after the sensors told it that the vehicle was at a rest.
They were stuck fast, and they'd stay like that until someone brought a foam decay module!
"Have a nice day," he told them mildly, putting the little remote in his pocket, then turning and meandering towards school at an easy pace that looked as if he had not a care in the world.
They sent to each other frantically to make sure that the other was alright, that the foam wasn't blocking mouth and nose. Lyn and Bryn both were frozen in the foam with their heads lower to the ground than their feet, and all Bryn could see was the sidewalk just in front of the steps. The foam had hardened around her neck, and she couldn't move it more than just a little bit, since fringes of the foam were attached to the lobes of her ears, and if she tried to move too much, she'd rip her ears off.
Lyn glowered in the direction of the retreating human, then she burst into helpless laughter. Bryn joined her seconds later.
What a man! Jyslin was lucky she found him first! Lyn and Bryn both were just a little bit jealous at Jyslin's good fortune!
Well, do we hang here all morning, or humiliate ourselves and send for help? Bryn asked after she got control of herself. If I remember right, the foam will dissolve on its own in a few hours.
I'm not hanging here all morning, Lyn countered.
Well, it should be fun following him around the rest of the day.
No, Lyn replied. He beat us fair, so we leave him alone. He earned it.
That he did, Bryn agreed. I just wonder where he got the foam, she mused.
I don't think we want to know.
You're probably right, Bryn acceded, then she sputtered aloud and started laughing again.
For some reason, those two didn't come back after he glued them to the sidewalk with crash foam, but that suited Jason just fine.
He took his test that morning and got the highest score in the class, then handed in his physics project after lunch. It still worked, despite what he did to it, a little sensor that measured flux in the spatial fabric that Professor Umera had everyone build as a lab exercise. It was nothing more than assembling pre-fabricated pieces, but it was still almost fun to do.
After lunch there was calculus, then came his second plasma-oriented course of the day, one of four such courses he took this semester, also taught by Ailan. Advanced Plasma Fundamentals, Introduction to Plasma Dynamics (the physics of plasma, which he had to take in conjunction with his physics class), Theoretical Plasma Systems I, and the lab companion class for Advanced Plasma Fundamentals, the class to which he was going. The other class was both lecture and lab, but this class was for lab, with only occasional lecture if Ailan didn't get the lecture finished from the last class. Those were hard enough, but stack calculus, Imperial History I (ancient Faey history), and Xeno-Psychology I (basically the Faey teaching the humans learning Faey technology how not to insult the Faey when interacting with them).
After lab, Xeno-Psych was the next class for today, and it was held in the old Tulane building on the far side of campus, twenty minutes after lab let out. He always took his time walking over there, and as a result, he always got into the classroom about a minute before Professor Tia-the youngest of all his teachers and without doubt the cutest-was ready to start class. She was a little doll, fairly short for a Faey woman, with hair that was actually blue, a very dark shade of blue that was much darker than her skin, almost midnight blue. She had the cutest little face, very cherubic and a bit mischievous, with noticeable dimples in her cheeks. She also had a very raucous sense of humor. Tia could get downright dirty sometimes, and she loved to tell bawdy jokes during class. Tia was equal measure of angel and devil wrapped up in one insufferably cute little package.
"Afternoon," she called, which was repeated rather unenthusiastically by her students. "Well, there's been a little change in plans, people. They just handed down a curriculum change, and we have to put it into effect."
That got everyone's attention. They all looked up at her from their panels.
"Usually we do the language insertion at the start of Xeno II, but they've moved that to the beginning of Xeno I, effective today. Since we're already halfway through the semester, that means we have to go back and get that out of the way now, before we continue on in our current chapter.
"Excuse me, Professor, what is an insertion?" a tall, spindly man asked from the back of the classroom. Jason didn't know his name.
"We teach you Faey," she explained to him. "Since it's a language, we can insert it telepathically. We'll do that today, and spend the next three weeks practicing pronunciation and writing. Then we'll pick up where we left off, and shift the last three chapters we used to do in this semester into Xeno II."
Jason's eyes immediately went flat, and he remembered what Jyslin said last night. Had she known? Had she talked to the school and found out about this beforehand? It seemed so.
He realized that she'd tried to scam him out of fifty credits! Geez, how low could she go!
Then he realized that she didn't do anything any worse than what he'd already done, and he had to chuckle ruefully.
The amusement faded when he realized what insertion entailed. A Faey would put herself in his mind, deeply into his mind, violating his innermost sanctity. And he had no choice but to allow it, to knuckle under yet again to the Faey Imperium, to be the obedient slave that he was being. He had no choice. He couldn't refuse, or he'd end up on a farm, and that was a fate worse than having a Faey rake her grubby little claws through his mind.
"Since there are thirty of you and one of me, that means I'm going to have some help. So, pack up your things and come with me down to the lecture hall, where our assistants are waiting. After the insertion, you'll be free to go."
"Umm, Professor, is this safe?" someone asked.
"It's totally painless," she assured with a dimpled smile. "There is some dizziness immediately afterward, and after you're over that, we'll tell you to go home and take a nap. That helps your mind sift through it all and digest it. If you're worried about it, Stan, I'll do it for you myself. That way you get someone you know and trust. Would you like that?"
"Yes ma'am," he said immediately.
Jason was extremely unhappy with this, but there was nothing he could do. He packed his panel in his backpack and joined the others as they went down into the largest classroom in the building, a large auditorium-style room with raised tiers on which desks stood. It held nearly a hundred people, and lined up along the base of the wall were ten Faey, five of them in the black armor of Marines, the other five in the robes or long-tailed shirts that the professors wore.
Jason stopped dead in the door. One of those five Marines was Jyslin!
She gave him a smug, victorious little smile, then shooed him on as someone nudged him from behind. Jason stalked into the room and sat down in one of the desks on the lowest tier, and he glared at her murderously. That bitch. She had this all set up. She knew about the change, somehow, and had managed to finagle her way into being one of the telepaths that would perform the insertion. Marines were much stronger telepaths than the occupational forces that served as the majority of the police and other governing forces, so it was no real shock to see Marines being pressed into service as telepathic inserters.
"Now, everyone take a seat," Tia called as she came in, then waited as everyone did so. "Not beside each other. Leave one desk to either side of you." She waited as some students moved to spread out. "These helpers and myself are going to go around and perform the procedure. Don't worry, all of us have done this before, that's why we're here. After it's over, don't get out of your seat until I tell you that you can, alright?" She nodded to the others, and they all fanned out. Tia went straight to Stan, but Jyslin didn't come to him. None of the others did either, telling him that Jyslin was saving him for last, and had already warned off all the others from teaching him.
He sat there and fumed for nearly twenty minutes, not even looking behind him. She had this all set up. She'd played him last night, obviously in revenge for what he did to her yesterday afternoon. He had no idea how she knew, but she did. There was nothing he could do. She'd already fixed it so nobody else would teach him, and he couldn't get out of not going through with it.
This battle went to Jyslin.
She plopped down in the seat beside him, her armor going clack as she did so, then put her elbow on the desktop and gave him an amused look.
"Shut up," he growled at her.
"I told you, I cheat," she told him.
He gave her a cold stare.
"I win this time," she said in a teasing tone. "Now, turn and face me."
"Why?"
"Because we do have something to do here," she told him tartly. "And I pride myself on my work. When I'm done, you'll be absolutely fluent in Faey. My mother taught Faey in primary school, so I have a stronger grasp on the language than most everyone else here. So, turn and face me. Now."
He was surprised by the steel in her voice. He did so, and she put her hands on his desk. "Put your hands here," she instructed. "I'm going to put my hands on your face, and then we'll begin. At first, you're going to feel me brush you, as you call it, then it's going to get much stronger. The important thing you have to remember is not to fight with me," she said, quite seriously. "In order for me to do this, I need to contact your long-term memory and put things there. I promise you I won't do anything other than what I have to do," she said in an earnest voice, her gray eyes very serious. "I won't look at anything, I promise. I know how you feel about being probed. That's one reason why I arranged to be the one to do this. At least with me, it's someone you know, and someone you won't have any trouble finding and kicking on the other side of her head if you don't like what she did to you," she added with a wink.
Now that surprised him, quite a bit. In a way, she was more or less right. In an odd way, he did feel a little better about the idea of a Faey that he knew doing this. Because she wouldn't just disappear. She promised to stop in tonight after she got off duty, and if he was really upset about what she did here and now, he could always punch her in the nose. That declaration of recognizing the possibility of retaliation actually made him feel somewhat better about the idea of it. Not that the idea of it didn't set his teeth on edge and make him feel like he was about to be anally probed with a telephone pole, but at least with Jyslin doing it, he could throttle the administrator if it pleased him to do so.
"Now," she said in a gentle, mollifying, cooing tone, lightly grabbing his hands and setting them on the side of the desk. "You're going to feel me brush up against you, then press in, like putting your hand into water. Don't fight me," she warned. "If you do, it's going to make it very hard, and it might hurt you. I'll just press in and sit there a minute so you can get used to it. I won't do anything, I promise, not until I feel you calm down. Are you ready?"
"Let's get this over with," he grunted in a low, ominous tone.
"Close your eyes," she told him. "It will make it easier. Concentrate on what's inside, not on what's outside."
He nodded and closed his eyes, bowing his head slightly.
"Alright, here we go," she said, reaching out and putting her slender, work-calloused hands on the sides of his face, over his cheeks.
He instantly felt her brush up against him, and he did his best not to resist that feeling, but it was not easy. It was an automatic, almost reflexive reaction for him to close up his thoughts when he felt a Faey doing what she was doing. He felt her feel around the edges of his instinctively raised barrier, and even as he tried to figure out how to allow her through it, she found a weakness in it and punched through. It was not a pleasant experience to have her breach the boundaries of his mind and invade him like an attacking army, like a disease. Immediately, he felt her presence inside his own mind, a strange thoughtless presence, like an alien object lodged within the pathways of his thoughts. He violently reacted to that contact, the first time a Faey had ever breached his defenses and actively entered his mind, so violently that his hands snapped up and closed around her wrists, seeking to rip them away from his face. But Jyslin's strength surprised him, holding her hands fast against his strength as she rode out his reaction to her, as the hands holding her wrists slowly stopped trying to pull her away. His reaction was a reflexive one, and as the seconds passed, Jason got less and less resistant to her presence, as he tried to get used to the feel of a presence in his head other than himself.
See, it wasn't that bad, her thought emanated from that alien presence, and he could hear it clearly within his own mind. I'll hear what you think, just to warn you. Oh, you can loosen your grip on my wrists now. I'd like to keep you from squeezing my hands off.
Sorry, he thought to himself.
It's alright, she answered. I had to literally attack you to get into your mind. I hope I didn't hurt you.
It wasn't pleasant, but I think I'm alright, he thought in answer.
I'll wait a bit, let you get used to the feel of it, she informed him. When I start, you'll see a dizzyingly fast blur of images, sounds, concepts, and even pure thoughts. I'm literally going to take everything I know about Faey and put it in your mind, sending it into your long-term memory. When I'm done, you're going to be a little confused and dazed, but it'll pass. You won't make much sense of what I'm going to teach you at first, it's going to take your mind a little time to go through it all and piece it together. I'm going to put everything there, but your brain's going to have to work out how it's going to store it all.
What do you mean?
I'll put it where I can, but your brain's going to take it all and move it, rearrange it the way it wants it, she explained. If it doesn't, you'll never be able to use any of this, and you'll forget it in about a week. That's why you'll need to go home and take a nap after the dizziness fades. An hour of sleep gives your brain a chance to rearrange things to its satisfaction without dealing with all the things it has to do when you're awake.
That made sense, or at least it seemed logical, after a fashion. Since he really didn't know how it worked, it certainly sounded like it was possible.
Ready?
Do I have a choice?
She seemed highly amused. Alright, here we go.