Catalyst

(English)

Day to day in Kemon’s camp was oddly mundane.

For all that I distrusted him, it was less than ten percent of his actions that made him an adversary. Most mornings we all woke up around the same, did our gravity-compensating exercises, then split up.

Every daily activity group, save for the Ronin’s combat class, was perfectly reasonable to my judgement. The groups were sharply divided between activities accessible to non-Adepts and otherwise. The only strong overlap between those groups were those dedicated to psionics.

It took all of forty-eight hours for someone to reverse engineer my amp blueprint into a psionic audio playback construct. It wouldn’t let you connect to a phone directly with a jack, but it would let people replay things they’d heard in their head.

More new constructs they made were technically inferior versions of some of the ones I’d already made. A bird’s eye view mapping construct? I’d done that before I’d learned Starspeak. A three-dimensional mapping construct? That was just my spatial processor.

The one grievance I had with the camp’s day-to-day was the lack of continuing education, but that seemed to be something stemming from the abductees themselves rather than any of Kemon’s influence. There were activity groups dedicated to school subjects, but they were the smallest and least attended ones by far.

The abductees didn’t have the leadership amongst themselves to organize better attendance.

Knox and Sid were actually among the most active in those groups. It made sense in a way. Knox was actually an adult, ostensibly hired by other humans. It shouldn’t have been so surprising that he would spend so much time trying to help teach kids how to do long division and algebra.

Sid never went to any Adeptry-based group in the mornings. For all that he flaked on the more ‘fun’ afternoon activity groups, he was fastidious about hosting the morning math and reading classes. His days seemed to have less variance than anyone else’s in the camp. Mornings were for teaching and afternoons were for reading textbooks, not participating in any particular group.

I found myself attached to the reading group almost by accident. The kid I’d punished the first week, Cody, had approached me quietly and asked for help learning Starspeak. Truth was, he was less behind the curve than he thought.

Kemon and his crew having picked up English meant abductees here weren’t getting much Starspeak practice.

I’d been surprised to learn that Kemon hadn’t tried to do what Marshal Tispas had. Kemon’s control of the abductees depended on him controlling what information they had. Not teaching Starspeak seemed like an obvious way to do that.

Except I’d been the one to prevent that before it could ever happen. With a psionic dictionary in everyone’s heads, it would be impossible to keep people from learning the language. So Kemon must not have bothered trying.

But as much as Starspeak was a tough language, so was English. A lot of trouble these kids were having wasn’t actually with Starspeak originally, but were rather from never having fully grasped their own language.

Too many of them had too much difficulty sounding out words. The first few days I’d been paranoid that some of them might have been dyslexic and that I had unreasonable expectations. But the more I talked to them, the more I became convinced it was just a question of practice.

A week or two dragged on, and I realized my efforts to reform my image must have really taken off. Because one morning, my reading group had triple its normal numbers, not all of whom were middle school age. Or human.

One of Kemon’s engineers, Dansi, arrived with a few of his other crew members I didn’t know the names of.

I passed out phonetic paragraphs of nonsense words paired with a psionic audio cue. Kids read the sounds out loud, English and Starspeak alike, and checked their answers against the psionic audio.

God, psionics were so cheating…

Meanwhile, I took the opportunity to probe Kemon’s crew, and Dansi in particular.

I observed. Every few days Win’s shuttle zipped up with three or four of the Casti crew, bringing back a similar number from orbit a few hours later.

Dansi shrugged.

she said.

I asked.

I’d poked my head into the A-ships piloting decks exactly once. Unlike when Daniel and I had been trapped, all the doors were unsealed now. I only had the Jackie Robinson to compare to, but it was obvious how different the A-ships were.

For one, there wasn’t half a deck of computer equipment built into the floor. No, all the computers were embedded into solid metal consoles with sleek crash chairs in front of each station.

Kemon’s crew—actually, probably Dansi specifically—had cut into exactly one of those consoles to try examining the hardware, and that A-ship had disengaged its thruster and reactor, and had not reconnected since.

I asked.

Interesting…

If Kemon really was in contact with ENVY or one of their siblings, maybe he’d been warned off. I knew the computer didn’t have the most amicable relationship with their ‘agents’. Drat. I should have asked Dustin more about ENVY’s disappearance.

I asked.

she said.

I asked.

she scoffed.

She blinked in surprise.

I explained. Hopefully she wouldn’t notice how vague that statement really was.

she said, translating the word herself this time.

I huffed.

she said.

I said dryly.

she preened.

Dansi said.

She didn’t seem to be lying. Interesting. So Kemon really was keeping his own crew in the dark. Just how far did that go?

I might not get another opportunity like this again…I’d gone for broke trying to call him out directly. Here was another opportunity to learn something critical, if only I asked a risky question.

The temptation to play it safe was like a physical force, pinching my tongue, and locking my jaw shut. Reach into the fire, it burns you, and you recoil reflexively. I had that same reflex now, to just shut up and bide my time.

Ironically, it wasn’t until I physically bit my tongue that the pain spurred me into taking the leap.

I said simply.

Dansi blinked again, caught very off guard. But her next words made it oh so worth taking the leap.

I said.

said.

I joked.

she conceded.

I nodded,

I asked.

she asked.

Dansi said.

That didn’t surprise me. Kemon kept all his secrets close to the chest. Talking with Dansi and other crewmembers just further confirmed that whatever Kemon had planned, only a few people were in on it. After the boss, Win was the only other person I knew who must be, and the more aliens I talked to, the more it seemed like that was as far as it went.

In turn, that opened up a whole new question; what could Kemon possibly be up to with just two people?

I asked.

Dansi clicked awkwardly.

I said.

she said.

I joked.

she said.

I was bothering her with a lot of off-topic conversation for what was supposed to be school hours.

Dansi clicked,

She pointed behind me, and I found Madeline waiting for me.

“Take five,” I said. “Or just keep doing what you’re doing. Just don’t go nuts or anything…”

Not two seconds after I’d stood did I hear someone humming the first lines…

“Ted and Madeline, sitting in a tree…”

I flicked that kid on the forehead as I passed, but it did not actually dissuade them or anyone else.

“Hey,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Two things,” she said. “First…I’m trying to figure out if I owe you an apology or not.”

“For anything in particular?” I asked.

“We’ve been pretty short tempered with you,” she admitted, “I and the other older kids…but you were being a dick.”

“I’m serious about my concerns,” I said. “But I was careless when sharing them, and I insulted everyone else’s intelligence in the process. I’m sorry.”

“Fuck, when you put it like that…” she muttered. “I’m sorry too. And then I’m sorry again, because even if you’re still thinking about your so-called concerns, that’s not what I’m here for today.”

That stung. But it wasn’t wholly unexpected.

“Then what can I do for you?” I asked.

“You can tell me if it’s true you gave Aarti advice in combat,” Madeline said. “She upset Ben, apparently with your advice.”

“I gave her two sentences,” I said. “It wasn’t that much help.”

“You got her out of his trap,” she said. “It was like a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

“Relax, I’m not trying to ruin your ‘Ronin’ rankings,” I said.

“What? No, I want you to do more!” she said. “I’ve been wanting to try beating Johnny ever since we made the group.”

“And you think getting my advice is good enough for that?”

“Fresh eyes are always good,” she said. “Besides, you’re an observer. You can give good criticism because you don’t have to be in the action. You’ll catch things we miss in the moment.”

“…I guess I can coach,” I admitted. “But I don’t know how well it’s going to be received…”

“No, you can’t just sit on the sidelines and give pointers, that got shot down this morning,” Madeline said. “But, you’re pretty good with psionics, right? So instead, you could make a construct that everyone could contribute to. If we can make something that gives fighting advice in the thick of things, anyone could be . We could make it a whole collaborative thing.”

“...You’re not just interested in my advice,” I realized. “You want to get me talking with everyone else more too.”

“Yeah” she admitted. “I haven’t missed the fact that you’re trying to mend bridges. I wanted to help.”

“And if you happen to get a cool psionic combat engine in the process?” I asked.

“Better for everyone, isn’t it?” she grinned.

“Well, I can’t argue with that…”

Misgivings aside, I could make an opportunity out of this. Madeline and the Ronin had been taught by the one crew member I was confident was party to Kemon’s plan. Even if nothing else came of it, I could get an idea of Win’s abilities.

I was desperate to avoid any version of events that saw me fighting other abductees. But Win? I could fight Win. Whatever sensibilities I’d picked up from Nai weren’t stoked at the idea of killing a Farnata. But I could burn that bridge if I came to it.

“For now, I’m still working with kids on reading,” I said, “and this afternoon I’m sitting down with Ike’s psionics workshop.”

“Lunch then,” Madeline nodded. “No need for anything too elaborate out the gate.”

“You got it,” I said.

·····

“The first day, you were making mechanized servos,” I said between bites of ration, “that’s not a simple thing to create quickly.”

Madeline had beat me to lunch and had already finished hers.

“Well, Ben can make really complex tools—devices, Johnny can make a ton of mass, but I split the difference. I’ve been trying to carve out an advantage by using psionic blueprints to make sort-of complex things quickly. Ben has to create his weapons component by component, and half the reason Johnny’s so crazy is because he can keep hemming you in with massive iron spikes.”

“Would you say you’re the best at psionics of your little ‘Ronin’ group?” I asked.

“Yes,” Madeline said confidently, “and don’t think I missed that tone.”

She said it coyly though, with a sarcastic smirk.

“Then you’re probably already on the right track, powers-wise,” I said. “The real problem is you have no sense of tactics. I mean this in the kindest, most constructive way possible, but you guys fight like idiots.”

Madeline’s face twitched. I must have really made progress, because that was all she did at first.

“Ted, don’t take this the wrong way, but what would you possibly know about Adept tactics?”

Oh boy.

I didn’t need to cover all that right now though. In fact, it might give me away if I did.

“Forget Adept tactics for a moment,” I said, “and think about just tactics. When you spar against Johnny, what’s your plan? How do you win?”

“I haven’t beaten him yet,” she said. “He’s too damn hard to reach. He can just keep putting spikes between us.”

“So when you got to spar with him next, what’s your plan?”

“…Try to reach him? I’ve got a few different ideas I’ve practiced, but I don’t know if they’ll actually work until I try them against him.”

“What about not trying to reach him?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“He doesn’t have to reach you to beat you,” I pointed out. “You said it yourself. He can attack from a distance with spikes.”

“I can’t match his range,” she said. “I can go about fifteen meters, but I lose precision. Johnny can comfortably create anywhere within forty.”

“I said forget the Adeptry for a minute. Just because you can’t create that far away doesn’t mean you can’t affect that far away.”

She looked blankly at me.

“Hey Johnny!” I said, materializing a water balloon in my hand and throwing it toward him. With the warning, he turned and caught the projectile only for it to pop and spill all over him.

“Seriously?” he said.

“Sorry, proving a point,” I said, dematerializing the liquid.

He rolled his eyes.

I turned back to Madeline, but she was less than impressed.

“You think I should throw things at him?”

“I think you’re looking for answers in the wrong places. It’s not your Adeptry that’s lacking. It’s mindset. You go into a fight without a plan, intent on testing ideas you’ve come up with. But that’s a losing strategy. If you aren’t sure you can win, you shouldn’t be fighting.”

“You think unless it’s a sure thing, we should just give up?” she scoffed.

“I mean you need to be sure you can win, that it’s possible,” I explained. “Not that you will win. You need to have some feasible idea of what success looks like beforehand. You need to be working toward a specific goal, not just reacting to or overcoming the things Johnny puts in your way.”

To Madeline’s credit, she visibly pondered that idea. Despite thinking me to have less combat experience than her, she really did think my outside perspective could help.

“Fighting should be goal oriented,” I explained. “A: think of your abilities as tools that can enable you to accomplish certain goals, and B: don’t think of your Adept abilities as your only tools.”

I pushed those two precepts at her in the form of a psionic rubric, but there was room to add more ideas.

“What is this?” she asked. “Some kind of psionic flow chart?”

“Why not? Advice is just context-sensitive information. If we add to the flow chart, it’ll account for more specific contexts,” I said. “Do that enough and we should wind up with something flexible enough to give emergency advice for any occasion.”

“It could be cool…” Madeline said, imagining it. “You could move through the chart at the speed of thought, or maybe rig somehow to simplify the output advice.”

“It doesn’t need to stay a flowchart, precisely,” I pointed out. “We could find different ways for people’s senses to connect to it. Isn’t someone already trying to make a psionic heads-up display?”

Madeline nodded. “We really should put this idea in front of more people sooner rather than later.”

“Why’re you so keen on making this a group project?” I asked.

“Is that such a problem?” she frowned.

“No, just curious,” I said.

“It feels like a responsibility,” she said simply. “Us older abductees are responsible for keeping the younger ones safe. Something like this could help everyone be ready in case of emergency.”

“Anticipating problems before they happen is definitely a good thing,” I nodded. It was reassuring to see at least one of the abductees thinking ahead. Maybe there were more and I hadn’t given them enough chance to show themselves yet.

“You talking about planning has me thinking about just how much I’ve been improvising in spars,” she said. “How do you practice planning?”

“Maybe instead of just improvising, you do some improvised planning? I’ve got psionics workshop right after lunch,” I offered. “Want to ditch the Ronin for today?”

“…Fine, but only because you managed to say the name with a straight face,” she smiled.

“You have no idea how hard it was…” I joked. “It’s such an awkward name…”

It was a productive afternoon.

·····

My evening was equally productive.

Once again, after everyone else was asleep, I slipped out of the hammock I had set up in one of the shacks. I didn’t burn a candle-radar this time, and it left me paranoid the whole trip. Being stealthy was so much easier when you knew exactly where everybody was…

I’d been right with Madeline, information was the ultimate weapon. But I kept surprising myself at psionics potential to organize and present that information in different ways. When we were reunited, I needed to talk to Nai about how she’d managed to replicate the radar’s interface.

Luckily, even without a candle-radar to help me, I was still first to the rendezvous.

Jordan was second.

“You’re lucky the gravity here is lighter than Cammo-Caddo,” she complained. “It’s bad enough climbing in these conditions. I can’t believe how bad it would be in heavier gravity.”

It was fascinating to hear her complain in a perfectly neutral tone. Like she was just making a detached observation.

“Five bucks says Knox says something similar,” I bet.

“Really?”

“His kind don’t come from a planet with a lot of varied elevation,” I said.

“Joke’s on you,” Knox huffed, pulling himself up. “I modified my bones. I could totally survive a fall from here.”

We were standing a rock far enough from camp we wouldn’t be overheard, but still much closer than where Knox’s secret antenna was stashed.

The three of us had met in secret a couple times before, and we’d quickly realized that it was better to be caught closer to camp than further away. Best to seem perfectly legitimate until the last possible second.

It was why we made no attempt to hunker down on the rock or avoid being seen. If we were discovered, we wanted to be seen and not heard. Because anyone looking from afar could be convinced by an explanation like late night stargazing, but anyone who drew close enough to hear us without our noticing would know exactly what we were up to.

The fact that the stars looked fantastic most nights didn’t hurt that cover story either. Scozha might have been an overcast wet gloomy mess most of the time, but Kemon had picked a valley with rare atmospheric patterns for this planet. Above the valley, the clouds seemed to part as the night cooled down revealing starry skies.

No one had noticed us yet.

“Honestly Knox, you’re embarrassing yourself,” I said helping up.

“It’s not my fault humans have such gangly arms,” he complained.

“I’m shocked you know the word ‘gangly’,” Jordan said.

“And I once again question her contribution,” Knox said. “Three people sneaking out raises a lot more suspicion than just two.”

“Well, think about if we’re caught,” I pointed out. “If it’s just Jordan and I out here…”

“Oh, that’s true,” Jordan agreed. “Just you and me, everyone will think we’re just having sex.”

“What cover could be better than that?” I nodded. “The more we deny it, the more convinced everyone will be.”

“…Seriously?” Knox asked. “Just like that? The first thing everyone things is going to be sex?”

“Second and third too,” Jordan mused.

“We’re all teenagers,” I shrugged. “Or close to it. I think it’s actually more surprising that both groups of humans I know about have managed to institute—at least seemingly—successful abstinence programs.”

“A better track record than every sex ed class I’ve ever heard of,” Jordan nodded. “It’s gotta be the shared harrowing danger we’ve all been through, right?”

I nodded.

“It builds that sense of unity and camaraderie that no one wants to break lightly.”

Knox muttered a swear in what could only have been a Vorak language.

“I don’t suppose we could actually focus on uncovering Kemon’s plans?” he said.

“One second,” I said, turning to Jordan.

I pointed out.

Jordan said.

I said.

she guessed.

I said.

she said.

“Alright Knox, congratulations. You’re officially off the bench,” I told him.

“That is so rude…” he marveled. “You just had a whole psionic conversation right in front of me…”

“Cope,” I shrugged. “What you need to know is this: Jordan’s putting together a psionic construct for communicating over interplanetary distances—”

“—Maybe even interstellar,” Jordan added.

Oh really? That was new.

“—and I thought your scientific background might help,” I said. “I haven’t learned the terminology in Starspeak, but Earth has something called special relativity. I don’t know the details in English either, but I know one of the important parts is how mass can’t exceed, or even match, the speed of light. It would take infinite energy. But Beacons exist. So what’s the deal?”

“Oh, yeah, I know some of that. Variable Reference, it’s called in Starspeak. The key thing to know is that Beacons don’t actually break the reference. They don’t move things faster than light. They don’t move things at all, they just manipulate distance. Things still have to move themselves though that manipulated distance.”

“I think I knew that already,” I said. “But what’s the difference? Aren’t Beacons still skipping us over billions of kilometers in no time flat?”

“Nope. Or…yes. It depends on your terminology. But more importantly, it depends on how you measure it. How do we measure speed?”

“Uhhh…distance by time?”

“Exactly,” Knox said. “You can’t actually measure speed directly. You can only calculate it based on other data. If I walk in a straight line for ten seconds, you wouldn’t use any other line to calculate my speed, right?”

“Yeah…” I said, not quite following.

“If I walk in a straight line,” Knox clarified, materializing a line of red powder on the ground, “you wouldn’t measure my distance by just any curvy line that had the same start and end points, right?” He punctuated the point by materializing a squiggly blue line that started at the same spot, meandering all over the ground before rejoining the other end of the red line.

“Yeah, you didn’t travel that distance,” I said. “You followed the red line.”

“Correct. If I tried to travel the blue line, to reach the same endpoint in the same time, I would need to break reference and exceed lightspeed. But…Beacons mess with distance. They literally abridge, shorten it.”

“Oh,” Jordan said, leaning forward. “I got it. It’s a Wrinkle in Time.”

“What?” I asked.

“It’s a lovely novel,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. The point is, I think I get it…you don’t go the long way because you can’t go the long way. You literally have to make a shortcut. You have to forget about moving faster…”

In a rare case of display, Jordan actually looked eager. Excited even.

“You keep calling it ‘reference’, even though in English it’s relativity,” she said, “but that’s because you have to avoid…‘messing’ with observers, right? I know when you get closer to the speed of light, time dilates. And at lower speeds, perspectives stay more consistent with each other…”

“A lot more consistent,” Knox nodded. “It’s just not worth travelling that fast unless you have to.”

“This is really good!” Jordan said. “This means that the same amount of time has passed on Earth that has for us. We’re not going to come back and find a hundred years passed or anything. Everything still travels at ordinary speed.”

“…That’s why they have to launch Beacons manually,” I realized. I had heard this before. I just hadn’t grasped the full implications until Jordan had worded it differently. “You still have to have something travel these interstellar distances at those ‘ordinary’ speeds. But once you do, you can have a wormhole connecting the two places, functionally bringing them closer together. You travel the distance and then cut it out…that means…”

I spun through my sparse knowledge of alien history. The original Beacon project, the Arrow, had been a little less than three hundred Earth years ago…

“We’re within three-hundred light-years of Earth,” I realized.

“Everyplace anyone has ever been is within three-hundred light-years,” Knox snorted. “Do you have any idea how big space is? How big the galaxy is?”

“It’s massive,” I said. “And…everything we’ve ever known is in one small pocket of it…oh wait…don’t tell me there’s another version of Fermi’s paradox that’s about our neighborhood of the galaxy instead of just one planet?”

“I don’t know what that is,” Knox said plainly.

“Focus,” Jordan said. “Psionics. Ansible. Contacting allies.”

“Right. Right...thinking back now,” I admitted, “when I first talked with the Beacon about distributing the psionic module, they mentioned it would be easy for them. Skipping ships means abridging space in such a way that real mass can move through the…‘manipulated distance’, as you put it. But the Beacon mentioned that abridging ‘real space’ is what took big energy. They said abridging ‘mental space’ took virtually nothing at all…maybe what we’re going for has already been done?”

“I can experiment,” Jordan nodded eagerly. “Psionics don’t exist normally…but we can embed them into physical objects. Maybe that’s tying them to something in real space…maybe that brings them more…’toward’ real space…”

“Sounds like you have a lot of ideas,” I said.

She nodded.

“Then you should know about the breakthrough I had when I rescued you,” I said, glancing at Knox. Part of me didn’t want to share this with him, but it was going to become common—if mysterious—knowledge sooner or later. “I found psionic-interactive exotic particles in the brains of both Adepts and non-Adepts. I think they’re the backbone for how brains connect to immaterial psionics and vice-versa.”

“Wait, really?” Knox asked, breaking character for a moment.

“Yes,” I said. “My working theory is that the Beacons add the particles to nerve tissue without realizing it, but that’s hard to confirm. When I asked the Beacon, they weren’t sure one way or the other.

“Brains exist in real-space,” I explained to Jordan. “Psionics are at least connected to the brain in some way. You’ll probably need to investigate the relationship between psionics and real space before you crack messing with thought-space.”

“If your superconnector relies on those particles in some way, and Nora’s hijack superconstruct tapped into nerve tissues, that’s both superconstructs needing physical structures in real-space to function. Can that be coincidence?” Jordan asked.

“I had the same thought,” I said. “It’s what made me go looking in the first place, but our sample size is low. Point is…Knox, can you help Jordan learn what she needs to get us in contact with our crew? If we have allies waiting in the wings, whatever plan Kemon has suddenly gets way harder to pull off.”

“I can,” he nodded. “What about you?”

“I’ve made some progress figuring out Kemon’s crew. I’m pretty sure it’s just him and Win that are up to no good, but I still have no idea what they’re actually planning,” I said.

“What about Kemon’s information? The five-thousand abductees?” Jordan asked.

“It’s just a number until I can prove it’s something he shouldn’t be able to know,” I said. “You have to take my word about ENVY, so everyone else will too. I’ve raised my stock around here, but not enough for that.”

“So, what’s your plan?” Knox asked.

“Well, I’d like to say something dramatic, like ‘ruin one of the rockets’,” I said. “But the truth is, I just want some time to look at their broadcasting set up. If I’m right and Kemon is talking to ENVY, then he’s probably got a laptop that receives messages.”

“I don’t care how good Earth telecommunications are,” Knox said, “there’s no way a small device could receive a message from deep space. Not reliably.”

“I think I agree,” I told him. “That’s why I want at the A-ships again. Kemon’s laptop is probably just getting messages relayed from one of the A-ships. If we can get up on his secret communication, we can find out exactly what Kemon’s after with all this.”