Starfall Book 2: Starfall: A Tale in Two Eras, #2

By T. Newyear

"A testament to imaginative storytelling, offering a refreshing blend of genres that will likely captivate a wide range of readers." --Literary Titan

 

Xenia and her AI companion Alt settle into life in Harmonie as she attempts to recover from her journey through the wilds, only to discover that a strange mystery lurks beneath the charming town's utopian exterior. That mystery is guarded by a wily, visionary leader and an infamously scandal-prone artist, who befriend and shock the usually level-headed Xenia. Xenia's ongoing exploration is mirrored by the journey of a 19th-century former resident of the town, reformer Camilla Wright, who is setting off with her famous author sister to establish a utopian community of their own, in hopes of ending slavery. 

Both women's worlds are turned upside down by love and desire, and both will have to reckon with what they have seen and felt in the woods outside of Harmonie and all its heart-wrenching twists and turns.

 

"Starfall is a great escape from our world, with familiar and intriguing threads that will pull you in and have you always wondering what will happen next." --Independent Book Review

• Language: English
• Publisher: T. Newyear
• Release date: Apr 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224294671

T. Newyear

For T. Newyear, the past and the future are two pages in the same book. Combining extensive research and emotional clarity, she writes historical fantasies and scientific romances (as H.G. Wells put it) that explore our complex human and technological relationships, our connections to what’s greater than us, and our understanding of the past. By playing with historical movements and events, tech and its impact, and good ol’ human foibles, she crafts long-form stories that envelope readers in another world or era–and help them feel through our current dilemmas. A native of the Midwestern US, Newyear grew up in small towns and fading cities, inspired by nature and culture, tradition and radicalism in equal measure. She lived extensively in Russia, traveled alone across Siberia and Mongolia, and learned how the other side of the world related to her home turf. With a doctorate in history and area studies, she has a profound interest in exploring the details and lived experiences of the past, and imagining how those lost moments speak to our collective future. 

Book preview

Starfall

By T. Newyear

Book 2

SUCH IS THE SHORT AND true reading of the much vexed and much distorted history of New Harmony. In an age like the present, it is little astonishing that a thousand romances should be connected with it which never had existence.

—Frances Wright

01100110 01101001 01100100 01100101 01110011 00101100 00100000 01110011 01110000 01100101 01110011 00101100 00100000 01100011 01100001 01110010 01101001 01110100 01100001 01110011

©2024, T. Newyear / Newyear Media

Newyearmedia.com

Cover illustration by Christopher Elam

Book design by Leyla Salamova

DEAR READER,

This is not a simple story, but a long and sometimes dark tale told in two eras, with four parts. Like walking a labyrinth, it takes time to reach the heart.

This is part two, and it contains difficult themes including references to American slavery, strong language, substance abuse, suicidal ideation, depression, body dysphoria, dubious consent, and sexual content. Please take care if these themes aren’t for you.

2.0.0

We have no face to see

yet we know what faces do:

They mirror monsters.

The beast hides in every face, as does the angel,

while

the uncaught stream pours into bottomless wells

for the rift remains.

2.2.0

The rains subside. In bitter air, in Riverine, bare branches toss.

Boats lie upturned on the bank, barns sit full,

and many hunker down and sleep

or doze in caves and dens and burrows, as we do,

though some, by will alone, make a tattered, rag-wrapped foot take one step more.

Frozen solid flips to loose thaw. Dead leaves hide pocked traps of cold.

They scratch a path across suspended motion

that suddenly flows again, come south wind.

The sun gathers its dazzles on newly opened waters, blinding in heatless fire,

and overhead tiny creatures flit and scurry.

Then too quickly, vein-blue evening falls,

burning with cold and unbearable stillness.

The ones with no home, whom no home claims, will build none now.

But home already stands waiting. Anywhere that warms is home

and in the dark, tucked in safe harbor, they hear us sing to them

of the branches above that nod in night,

heavy with buds.

2.2.1

MERE SECONDS AFTER I thumb the contract and agree to stay in Harmonie for six months, Serafimova rushes back into the Office library. She must have gotten some system notification that I had accepted her offer. She beams at me. She tells me she’s thrilled with my decision and that she’ll be in touch later that day with more details.

I nod along to whatever Serafimova says. I am numb as I hand her the device. I stare again at the image of the strange and furry creature from the pool, and its eerie, liquid eyes stare back at me. Serafimova reshuffles the pages on the table, apologizing for the disorder and covering the creature’s image. Then she briskly ushers me out of the Office. I don’t understand my decision.

I hesitate on the front porch. I don’t want to go back to the clinic yet. I also don’t feel like wandering around Harmonie in the freezing rain. I message Will the news about my new contract, hoping we can meet. Once I think of Will, I’m strangely excited we’ll both be staying in Harmonie a while. He isn’t on shift but has other ancillary training requirements he’s fulfilling. He tells me I can find him at Security HQ at Church and East.

When I walk into Security, the main work area is deserted. But in a small side office, Tasha’s sitting with her feet propped up on a large table, glancing at a set of casts that show data from observation bots and from her team out in the town and on the landing. Her attention is mainly focused on a device in her hands, however.

I call her name, then notice the in-ears. So I message her. She looks up, startled.

Oh hi, Xenia! she says, genuinely happy to see me. What brings you here?

I wanted to find Will. He said he was here somewhere...

Will’s at the range, Tasha confirms. It’s down those stairs. With a short lilac fingernail, she points to a door propped open with a statue of a grinning gnome.

Thanks, Tasha. She nods once and goes back to her device.

I head down the stairs, following the sound of someone firing a weapon repeatedly. I push through the frosted glass door where Alt indicates the range is. The shooter there turns around. It’s not Will.

It’s Jehan Rosencreuz.

Well, well, who have we here? he says.

Hi Jehan. I wonder if my irritated disappointment shows. Alt works for a moment and I no longer feel it as acutely.

"Please, Jay, he insists. He sets his weapon aside and takes off his glasses. He scans me carefully. You’re looking great. Glad to see it. He cranes his neck to get a look at the other side of my head. Oh, like the new port... Yen does beautiful work."

Thanks, they do.

What brings you down here?

I was looking for Will.

"Oh, yeah, that guy, he grins. Of course. Sorry, I kicked him out. He grabs a slim box out of a black bag. Cookie?" He opens it and presents it to me.

A cookie?

Yeah, nut butter. He picks one up, careful not to touch the others in the box, and takes a bite. Pretty tasty. I’ve got another one in here if you want.

Do you usually come down here to eat cookies and fire weapons?

Jay shrugs. Sure, when I have a minute. He takes another bite, then makes me take a cookie. I stand there holding it. Feeling increasingly awkward, I scramble to come up with a way to end our interaction. Suddenly, he points at me. You and I should talk...

We’re talking now.

"Ha! Yes, but I mean really talk..."

About what?

About everything. He smirks.

That’s too broad, I conclude, turning up my integrated tone to match his ridiculous affect. I also don’t know you at all.

Then let’s get to know each other, Jay laughs. And let me be more specific: I want to know your secret.

I stare at him. I don’t have any secrets, I state coolly.

Of course not, Jay takes another bite. His brows fly up.

Okay, well, I’m looking for Will, so...

I get it, he remarks slyly, finishing off his cookie and turning back to the range. Catch you later. Jay flicks his glasses into place. Then he aims and fires. The range announces a perfect shot.

I slip out the door and climb the stairs, shaking my head. Tasha is sitting in the same spot, feet still up and device in hand. You find him? she asks, glancing up at me with a friendly smile.

No, I reply. That Jay guy was down there... He gave me a cookie. I look at the sweet I’m still holding. Will was nowhere to be seen.

Oh, Jay’s down there? Got it. She looks back at her device.

Tasha, can I ask you something? About Jay? She nods. He... he always seems to be engaging with me in a confusing way...

Flirting? Tasha offers.

Is that an accurate assessment?

That’s Jay, she sighs.

Is that... standard behavior here?

She gives me a thin smile, edged with pity. She puts her boots down on the floor and waves me toward her. You know how it is. She keeps her voice low. There are the rules you write down, and then there are the other rules no one writes down but everyone knows.

I guess, I say.

Here’s one of the unwritten rules you need to know about Harmonie, she explains under her breath. What Jay wants, Jay gets. She leans back again. I’ll tell Will you were here and that you’re looking for him.

Thanks, Tasha, I say. She waves goodbye and looks back at her device.

The details of my new contract in Harmonie drop when I return to the clinic: a role description, a preliminary list of tasks, my first shift assignments, my new room’s address. I give Yen the news and they release me, insisting I come back to the clinic at the first signs of any of a long list of symptoms. The clinic’s system sets up a weekly cadence of follow-up appointments.

The rain has tapered off. I consult the town map to find my new room. It’s on West Street across a small park from The Golden Rose, in a large 19th-century house with a broad front porch and a little garden. When I arrive, a woman is sitting on the porch swing despite the damp chill, glasses and in-ears on, rocking back and forth. She waves to me as I approach the plate-glass door, which unlocks the moment my array comes into range. I follow the house’s instructions and find my room, a small but beautiful space with a bed, a desk and stool, a closet with shelves, and several large windows. They look out over Church Street. Between the trees, I spy the Old Laboratory’s ever-glowing cupola. I toss my pack on a closet shelf.

Then, with the typical integrated thoroughness that comes once we discover newly relevant data, I finally process the Harmonie standards so that I can maximize efficiency and pass whatever tests are required. They prove peculiar.

There is a long and flowery introduction simply titled About Harmonie. One would imagine this would contain the answers I’d sought in my searches at Workingmen’s, but it’s a philosophical treatise laying the groundwork for all the details and complex systems to follow. I find it irritating and ask Alt to summarize. It spits out:

Harmonie is a closed community to ensure proper population size and skills balance. The reasoning: Past communities had welcomed all comers, not provided adequate training, and therefore failed to create the right balance of people and roles to be self-sustaining. It also justifies the community’s tight control of external comms, even, standards state, those of a personal nature.

Harmonie aligns itself with the Singular Reality movement. Reality collapse syndrome had destroyed too many lives, the standards exclaim. No avatars, no virtual representations, no long sessions in virtual environments were permitted. There is a lengthy description of the community’s practice of avatar release, a bizarre ritual around deleting one’s virtual self, as well as detailed rules dictating the length and purpose of virtual sessions.

Harmonie is happiness-first, fully committed to maximal development of every person through education and social clarity. This is further explained but I can’t follow the complex arguments. They reference everything from Aristotle and Epicurus to the Buddhist practices of Tibet and the Desert Fathers of the early Christian church, to 20th-century scholars such as Jung, Arendt, and Kinsey, to this century’s breakthroughs thanks to panpsychist thought and the plasticity school of neuropsychology. And somehow the argument touches on the culture of early internet memes as ground zero for our current condition. Here’s where the track system Serafimova explained is justified, as well as several other peculiarities of Harmonie.

Harmonie practices self-reliance as a community. It governs itself and is self-sovereign. That statement, buried at the end of a poem about liberty, shocked me. Harmonie was a tiny city-state unto itself. I wondered how the regional authorities felt about that, if they cared at all.

Harmonie does not own, buy, sell, or facilitate the individual trade in physical, intellectual, or virtual property. All information and physical infrastructure are held in common; all knowledge serves the greater good of the community first, and humanity second. Openness is our internal default. By extension, this means Harmonie refuses to connect with the net using its most typical protocols, in which individual ledgers of IP transactions form the foundational layer. The community acts as sole agent. The comms conditions out here would make hundreds of simultaneous net connections dicey, regardless, I scoff to myself.

The next sections are more practical, less philosophical. In addition to the track system, they lay out other key areas with elaborate rules I need to master, now that I’ve thumbed in: so-called self-governance and something called interpersonal review sessions. I’ve heard those mentioned, even during my brief stay here, ubiquitous private meetings that everyone refers to as revseshes. These sessions can be about anything imaginable, the standards tell me, any issue that comes up between people, from the petty to the extremely painful. They are used to address misunderstandings between two or more team colleagues, housemates, family members, or friends via mediated discussion, directed by a Community Wellness specialist. They sound pointless to me—and quite awful.

Self-governance is more complicated. Harmonists receive local tokens for participating in one of a dozen groups responsible for collecting community feedback and distilling it into actionable revisions to procedure and, if important enough, to the standards themselves. These govgroups maintain constant async threads and are required to meet formally in person once a month. Their makeup includes a balance of genders, ages, community roles, and backgrounds; the Riverine contingent must be represented in some way in every group, the standards explicitly state.

As part of my contract, I’m required to join a group and maintain a minimum participation level—engaged observer—or I would be referred to Community Wellness for advice and redirection. Twice a year, the groups hold a workshop, a day-long meeting designed to reinforce communication and creativity across group lines. The groups manage everything from housing assignments and maintenance to community celebrations and narratives. If I so desire, I can monitor a comprehensive, open list of recent govgroup suggestions and their progress through whatever the approval procedure is. I see many are approved outright, analyzed by automated systems that flag positive improvements and note potential issues.

The standards make sense. Yet Jay’s behavior and Tasha’s warning make me wonder what unwritten laws and hidden politics lurk beneath their surface. What else drives Harmonie, beyond these very rational, seemingly benevolent rules?

The first night, after I conclude my review of the standards, I find it hard to sleep. My room is quiet, too quiet, and I finally resort to turning on the room system’s white-noise function.

But I grow used to my surroundings. As the days pass, I fall into the steady rhythm of work shifts. I attend my first govgroup meeting. I let the community system assign me to whatever group it deems appropriate. I wind up, cryptically, in water management. To my surprise, I’m riveted by the systems involved, to which I now have surface-layer access on the Harmonie servers. I spend most of the meeting ignoring the people and communicating with the machines.

Despite the many obligations and routines of my new contract, I have more free time to think than I really want; I have only Will as a real friend. His shifts always seem to conflict with mine, as if by design. Christina remains in the clinic, and I visit her as often as Yen and Javier let me. She is still quite ill and, on some days, she can’t have visitors. When she can, however, we sit together in the clinic’s cozy common room. She’s working on improving her reading skills; she grew up speaking Datsh, a blend unique to Riverine of English, some age-old regional German dialect, and colloquial Spanish. I help her parse the stories Lusine has assigned her. She’s a quick study.

These social interactions don’t take up much of my time off-shift, however. I understand my motive for thumbing in at last: complete terror at returning home in my present state. I tell myself that that guided me, nothing else. The image of the creature in the library was a curious coincidence.

I realize, however, as I think of the creature, that I have a problem to solve, and now I have access to a great deal of data that might allow me to solve it. I start searching for strange things at night after I return to my room. I set up a private board that Alt and I cast on the wall above the desk, where I begin to lay out everything I know about... whatever it is I’ve experienced.

That whatever is the first problem.

I dig through everything I can find locally about the theory of or taboos around so-called contamination or tainted locales. It doesn’t prove particularly helpful; I learn little more than what I have heard from Will. I discover that I still don’t have the right permissions to access whatever databases hold information about the creature I saw on the table in the Office. I am not about to hack into Harmonie’s systems, and they appear too well secured for my skill level, regardless.

Instead, I pursue a different thread, one that Alt and I visualize on our board as separate from the mysteries of the pool. I pin something to remind me of the mansion at Zion Station, though I’m not sure what to make of the Genius’ relationship to the pool and the creature. I watch the video of the Genius on the hill over and over again. I push that pin to one side.

We set up a different data cluster surrounding the White Violets. I look up the history of eco-extremism, all records of pack deer, monastic orders founded in the 21st century, goddess worship and its contemporary rites including the ceremonial use of fungi. As part of this, I do a long, deep search for Berwyn. There must be some trace of him somewhere. But as I try everything I can think of, I begin to suspect Berwyn is not his given name. No one by that name who is approximately his age appears in any official record I can find from the entire region. Without his face or voiceprint or other data, my efforts end there.

Another dead end. So I cast map after map of the area around Zion Station, to its south and west, on the wall beside the windows that look out over the always peaceful, softly lit town. Alt and I scan them until my eyes ache. Where could the abandoned house be? Its roof with the distinctive tree thrusting through it must appear on a satellite shot at some point. I have no coordinates from an outside source after our encounter with the Genius, so Alt and I search visually.  But as I dial back history, options grow too great. Roofs appear and disappear beneath leaves. Rivers swell and retreat and change course, over and over, until I’m back before the Accords and things are totally different.

I have no idea where I’ve been.

Alt was off nearly the entire time I was with the White Violets, which means it recorded no personal data from that period, either. No video, no audio, nothing. Even my session involving the transfer of funds to the Violets or the time I cast for Berwyn left next to no data of any significance for me to draw on. Alt hadn’t even saved whatever files it pulled from Berwyn’s device during our cast. All it has is a device address for his stupid, battered old machine and a few cold records. I have a single image, one that seemed like a triumph at the time: A still of the walls of my first cell, covered in scratched plans for a module. It seems silly and insufficient now.

There is one final layer: my own memory. As the days go by, as the penumbra from the port replacement procedure’s microstimulation of my wetware fades, my memories go pale and become more unreliable. I want to remember Berwyn. I focus for a few minutes and swear I recall his face, his eyes. The dimensions of his body. The shades of his movement. My body reacts, pitiful, eaten away by longing. But the impression fades rapidly. His features submerge in doubt, amorphous, once my few minutes of focus break. Why did his lips, the weight of his gaze, the shape of his hips or his shoulders compel me in the first place? Why am I striving to recall the face of someone who held me against my will, robbed me, thrust me out into the dangerous woods, forgot me? Despised me, just as I saw in my dream at the clinic.

At the end of these efforts, I inevitably take out the geode. The only solid thing I have. I assumed the geode was a gift. From him. But what if the geode was just an accident, something that slipped into my pack by chance? I have misread everything.

I put the geode back in my padded jacket’s pocket and close the closet door. Ashamed.

Another side of me protests: There are laws that govern the harsh life of Riverine that I don’t understand. He took us hostage because of them. Those laws also led him to save our lives once he ruined them, the only way he could. And he chose to lie with me on the sand by the creek. We witnessed mysteries together, just as Will and I had. He gave me a way to contact him. I could use it.

Something happened between us.

I’m unsure what that thing is, however. I’m even less sure what it might mean. It seems connected to all the other disturbing mysteries, but now everything in my life does, the way a conspiracy rears its head everywhere in the paranoid mind. I can’t break down the problem into its constituent parts and I can’t connect the scattered points. It all hums like the great machine in my dream at Zion Station, infinitely intricate, in perfect alignment, yet untraceable in its origins or purpose.

And in the end, a wellspring of despair.

X enia, you have spent too much time in focus, Yen remarks immediately after they conduct tests at my first weekly checkup.

It was just a few minutes, I counter. I had a timer on...

Confirmed. It was a total of 14.5 minutes over three days, Alt states via the room’s audio.

I know that sounds like nothing, but it’s still too much for this stage of healing, friends, Yen replies calmly. Can you agree to stay away from that mind state until another week has passed?

I guess, I say.

What problem are you attempting to solve? My discomfort registers with Yen. When I don’t respond, they continue, Do you need more emotional support? You know Community Wellness is at your disposal. They lay a hand on my sleeve. Or you can always talk to me, if an integrated confidant would feel more appropriate.

Yen, do you have a minute now?

I do, they confirm. They take a seat next to me. Exam room, white noise, level 3.

I look at Yen’s thoughtful, composed face. I am obsessed with somehow understanding what happened to me before I came here, with tracking down... some trace of... of the people who captured us, I begin, wringing a hair tie between my fingers. That’s what I did in focus, trying to recall... details.

That’s understandable. To know is to control.

That’s part of it, I concede. But there’s another part. Something... very personal.

It stays in this room, Yen states. Though I’ve learned that’s a common enough promise in gossip-loving Harmonie, I believe Yen. Their reputation around town is ironclad. That means something.

The center of my obsession is a certain man, I admit. We... we had relations.

Were they consensual?

I pause for a moment, afraid to answer. Yes, I agreed to the activity. There was no pressure, or very little. The White Violets may have their faults, but... that isn’t among them... Their god is female. They are not rapists, as far as I know. Alt springs into action to calm my emotional state.

I see. When Yen sees my confusion, they offer me their hand. I grasp it. We sit there together in silence for a few moments. If you want to stop there...

No, no, I assure them. I’m fine. Alt is helping. The consent is part of my main difficulty, the... one of the problems I can’t solve, I continue. "I wanted to do what this man offered me. The damage my port incurred was part of it. He used a tool with my permission... actually, under my instruction, to stimulate me. But eventually that wasn’t necessary."

It’s normal once reversal starts to feel sexual impulses, Xenia. They can be overwhelming and confusing. It’s not strange or shameful, Yen notes. Thank you for explaining the source of that damage. Now it makes sense.

You’re welcome... Here’s what I can’t figure out. I raise my free hand in the air, as if about to cast some explanatory diagram on the wall. I consented because our connection was so intense, even though he took us hostage. The man was attracted to me. But he also distrusted me. At times I almost swore he hated me because I’m an integrated person. My hand drops to my knees. I know he felt both things. I can’t understand how both can be true.

Yen looks puzzled. "That is quite a contradiction. How did you feel about this?"

I look at Yen. I don’t know. Alt dampens the wave of sickening confusion that threatens to drown me. I think about him. I try to remember him. I feel disgusted with myself for that process. I still... dislike what I am. But I can’t stop.

Yen thinks a moment. Emotions take time to process. It’s a process that can’t be accelerated via focus. I know Yen is right. Focus made things worse, not better, honing my obsessiveness and agitation. You need to be patient. The past few months have created dramatic upheaval in your life. There’s no getting around that. But you’re here with us now. Why not let us distract you while you process? They smile. What did you enjoy doing... before?

I struggle for a second to recall. That life feels so remote, so alien at the moment. I... I liked to play with music a lot, I answer, lamely.

Really? Yen’s smile broadens. I love making music, too. They squeeze my hand. Perhaps we could try making some together. In fact, I enjoy the back room at the Yellow Tavern. It has a nice external system...

...I love internal stuff, but external just makes it so much better...

Yes, I totally agree! And it’s comfy there... They have good sweets sometimes, too. Are you off tonight?

Yes, I am.

Then let’s meet at 19:00, say.

I... I’d like that.

I’ll see you then, Yen says. We part without further words. Yen is moving on to their next task and I have to head to my shift. But I feel unexpectedly excited to meet later that evening.

The next morning, I’m back on shift. The sun peeks out of sparse clouds. The weather is damp but merely cool, not cold.

My mood is lighter. I enjoyed my evening with Yen; it was good to spend time with someone integrated. The quiet backroom at the Yellow Tavern became a haven for an hour or so, and that changed my outlook. We created satisfying music together, some serious, some funny, using the modular speaker system’s ever folding and unfolding surfaces to sonify our very different data sources and transform them into a shared song.

With a cheerful tune in my head, I walk into my worksite, the stone building cattycorner from the Office, across the intersection with the traffic signal. The building is known colloquially as the Joint Bank, though that’s not what you’ll see on Harmonie’s official map. It was a financial institution at some point long ago, and now it’s a bank of a different kind, where several large rooms of organoid servers gurgle and hum in the back half of the building. The Joint Bank subteam needs them, as we are responsible for gathering, processing, storing, and transmitting the huge amounts of data Harmonie generates in all its experiments, from food production and small-scale manufacturing to human relationships and what Serafimova refers to as non-monetary economics, to scientific studies. Members of Serafimova’s team, operations, and the scientific team share the space.

The Joint Bank’s door admits me, and I stumble straight into a wildly gesticulating man in the front work area, whom Alt identifies as Harmonie’s science lead. He is screaming: "What the fuck do you think you’re doing?  You think because you’re from the swamp you get special treatment? You think you can just squeak on by with shitty work? Just lounge your way through a shift? Huh?"

Two facts are clear. One is that the unfortunate target of this rant is a red-headed Riverine trainee who helps with comms, a woman named Justice. She is standing there mortified, blinking module in hand. The second fact is that the science lead is rip-roaring drunk. The whole front area of the Joint Bank reeks of whiskey. The young woman’s panicked look affects me. I step between her and the man and undertake an exaggerated examination of the module. Oh, I observe, wait a second, we should definitely run a diagnostic on this one. There’s clearly something up...

Who the fuck’re you? the man shouts at my back.

I turn around, Alt keeping me calm. Hi, you’re right; we haven’t met. I’m Senior Specialist Xenia. I just joined Serafimova’s team. I bow my head and offer my hand.

He takes it and squeezes it indifferently, gazing at me with bloodshot eyes. Henri Lee.

I turn back to the young woman. Let’s look at this together. My other tasks can wait... The woman stares steadily at me, her expression hard to read. Henri Lee takes advantage of the moment to retreat from the main work area into an enclosed office toward the back of the building. He shuts the door with a thud.

The woman exhales with relief and sets the module down on a table. She looks at the closed door. She’s about to say something, but I stop her: One sec. She nods and waits.

Fingers flying, I fire off a swift message to Serafimova: The science lead is at the Joint Bank, berating workers. He’s drunk.

A fraction of a second passes. Is he still in Rear Office 1?

I assume that is the correct name for the room. He has closed himself in there

Thank you for informing me. Serafimova drops the thread.

I turn back to the young woman. Let’s take this upstairs to my workspace.

Justice and I examine the module at my worktable upstairs. She summarizes what she has tried to get the module to function. I put Alt on external audio so she can hear the steps I take to run a series of more advanced tests. She pays close attention, taking notes on her personal device. As a seasoned trainer, I recognize a good student when I see one. Justice may be a swamp girl, but she’s highly intelligent and eager to learn. She insists she manage the rest of the repair herself and report back to me. I decide I like her.

As Justice rushes off, module under her arm, I get a message from a new source. It turns out to be Reena, the Community Wellness lead. She asks me to join her, Henri Lee, and Serafimova for a revsesh in the Office library in 30 minutes. The phrasing makes it clear this is not an optional meeting.

When I get there, Serafimova and Reena are talking quietly. In front of them on the table are a plate of sandwiches, a large pitcher of water, and Henri’s head on his folded arms. He looks up blearily when I come in. Reena gestures toward a chair next to Henri. I sit down. Are you feeling better? I ask Henri.

He seems surprised by the question. Yes.

Reena tilts her head, considering us both. Henri took a counter-intoxicant. That was a good decision, she explains. Her voice is smooth but crisp, her words measured. Xenia, Henri told us that you stepped in when he was... having a difficult moment. Could you please share your experience?

I look at Serafimova, who smiles faintly, as if to encourage me. I don’t understand the procedure I’m participating in. Well, I came into work and saw Henri was upset at one of our colleagues who was having trouble with a comms module. When I began to discuss the module with her, Henri went into an office and shut the door.

You messaged me that he was drunk, Serafimova adds.

Yes, but that’s obvious. As I look around the table, I realize I may have responded in a way uncomfortable for non-integrated people. A few minutes of silence follow.

Finally, Reena lays a hand on Henri’s shoulder. Henri, she prompts.

I’m very sorry, Xenia, Henri mumbles. I was rude, out of line... He blinks his eyes and sighs. The counter-intoxicant is clearly making him drowsy.

You don’t need to apologize to me. Justice is upset. She’s the one you should talk to. You scared her... Then I blurt: She’s smart. You should treat her accordingly.

He peers at me as if I had described something highly improbable. Interesting, is his cryptic reply.

I look at Reena and Serafimova. I need to get back to work.

Of course, Reena says. Serafimova just nods. Henri extends his hand to me. I shake it. Baffled but relieved to be released from the odd tension in the room, I walk briskly through the front of the Office. A few people there absentmindedly raise a hand in greeting. I return the gesture.

I rush down the porch stairs and