Strangely enough, my first reaction wasn’t positive. Not that I like him any less – more than ever, in fact – and I don’t doubt he’ll be as good a teacher as he is a captain. But it will be like when I was attached to Fourth Squad on Muina. I’ll be an assignment and the assignment will end and I’ll be someone else’s problem for a while. I can’t think of any way to guard against that.
And I don’t want to associate Ruuel with tests and experiments, for him to ring a bell and see if I drool on cue. I don’t want him to be the one treating me as a lab rat.
Not that I get any choice. Tonight I’ll replay him telling me to think about otters, and probably feel just as surprised and glad that he remembered that so distinctly.
I can still feel his hand.
June
Sunday, June 1
Pedestal, schmedestal
I was right to worry about being treated as an experiment by Ruuel.
The day started well enough. I was pleased with myself for succeeding in dreaming of otters, and in a calm frame of mind. There was an email from Nenna waiting for me, and after I read it I had to go and watch last night’s The Hidden War episode, because Nenna’s email was an apology for it.
To think I used to think it would be cool to go on reality TV. Nothing makes me feel less like myself than to watch my introduction to Tare turned into entertainment.
It wasn’t as bad as Nenna obviously felt. The entire episode was from Nenna’s point of view (or a thinly disguised version of Nenna called Senna) and was all about her Dad bringing home a stray to foster. Since most of my time with the Lents wouldn’t have been detailed on my file, it was pretty obvious the scriptwriters had sat down with Nenna, and maybe the rest of her family, and had her describe everything I’d said and done while I was there. From the level of embarrassment in Nenna’s email, I’m presuming she got paid for it.
The episode was really about Nenna, about what it had been like for an ordinary Taren girl to have an alien stray added to her family. They’d even written in a boyfriend for her, just so he could be caught ogling the stray’s legs and make Senna feel conflicted. And there were all these conversations I’d never heard, so didn’t know if they were true. Did Nenna’s sister protest the idea of her father taking in a stray in the first place? Did the Lents really have a doubtful discussion about my difficulties with the language and how little I seemed to be progressing? The actress’s very fractured Taren is being used as a source of comedy and cuteness, far more appealing than the reality – it helps when the person saying things backward and being barely comprehendible is a gorgeous, kittenish girl with huge eyes, and the words she uses incorrectly tend to be mild double entendres or accidentally witty.
I wonder what Earth’s copyright position is on the songs I’d played to people from my phone being used in Taren television shows? It was very weird to hear Gwen Stefani and the Portal closing credits song being used in a Taren show. I could tell from the brief explanation given for the Portal song that my lab rat is definitely going to feature in upcoming episodes.
They showed Nenna and me falling and getting hurt, and then it stayed with Nenna for her first few days in hospital, scared and guilty and angry, and facing arduous rehabilitation work. If she’d been relying on Earth’s level of medical technology, she’d be in a wheelchair for life and that would be my fault. Of course, on Earth people don’t teleport and neither of us would have been hurt.
Instead of replying to Nenna’s email, I sent her a channel request and ended up chatting to her for half an hour. The fact that she’d spoken to the writers didn’t bother me nearly as much as the thought of her hating me, and I was incredibly relieved that blaming me for her injuries wasn’t the reason she hadn’t returned my emails[3].
Once she was sure that I really wasn’t upset, Nenna reverted to the girl I was more familiar with, and immediately started trying to pump me about the Setari. I did tell her there was someone in Third Squad who reminded me so much of her, but figured it was best to wriggle out of telling her any real detail.
First Squad were on rotation today, but that didn’t stop Mara from snaffling me before they were due to go out and throwing balls at me, and then ordering me to go through some of the junior grade combat exercises after lunch (there’s lots of interfaced-based training I can follow – I don’t actually need any of the Setari to stand over me to do it). And in this case I was glad to do it because I really needed to not concentrate on upcoming training with Ruuel.
I may as well have been fourteen and going on my first date, I was so keyed up. Since Fourth Squad’s on the next shift from mine, my Sights training is scheduled for late afternoon for me, and first thing in the morning for Ruuel. It’s so hard to be sensible about getting to see him. I ended up taking a needle-cold shower to distract me from the waiting, and filled in the last of the time brushing my hair a few thousand strokes and braiding it into a French braid so that I could at least look all efficient and businesslike.
The area where I was supposed to meet him was a new one to me, a series of rooms off a single corridor, all with observation windows. Sights Training. I was booked in room five, but was distracted by room three, which had two Kalrani weaving their way through it. It was a kind of obstacle course, but with moving sections. I can only suppose it helps train Combat Sight. Suitably padded, but I bet it was no fun being hit by swinging beams – let alone falling to the ground from the more aerial parts. I can only hope that none of my training ever takes me into such a room, because the gymnastic expertise required looks to be Olympic level.
I’d been watching a couple of minutes when Ruuel arrived, standing to my right and just a little behind. I’d been having grim and dramatic thoughts about the reasons the Kalrani were pushing themselves so hard and asked: "How many have died in training?"
"Five. Put this on."
He looked like he was in a bad mood, which was not the way to make me look forward to the session. Ruuel with his eyes nearly shut is best avoided, especially when he hands you a blindfold by way of greeting. Nanoliquid too, so that when I reluctantly held it up to my eyes and touched the ends together it oozed under my fingers, then flowed down to cover my ears as well. Yuck. It was extremely effective, and very disorienting. All I could hear was my heartbeat, and I could see nothing at all.
"Your interface will be reduced to minimal function during testing," he said in text, and immediately cut it back so I couldn’t do anything at all. Then I was levitated off my feet and moved. It was hugely disconcerting. I’d come to expect brevity from Ruuel, but this made me feel way too powerless, especially when I wasn’t put down, but kept floating in the air. All I could see was blackness, and a square text box floating in front of me which said: "Test 1" and the date.
It changed to: "You will be given a series of containers. Attempt to divine the contents of each container. If you cannot make a clear identification of the content of the container, use the first word or image which came to mind when you touched the container. Responses are to be verbal. Signal that you understand."
"…understood," I said, making an effort not to show I was annoyed. After all, sensory deprivation was logical in the context. I lifted my hands up obligingly, and something cool and round dropped in them: it felt like a glass ball, about softball size.
3
I was also more than a little relieved to know that KOTIS wasn’t blocking my emails, which had occurred to me more than once.