The upshot of which is that I got to spend the afternoon in the medical building, trying to reproduce my expanded state under clinical conditions for the benefit of the technicians. Only Kaoren, Maze, Zan, Zee and Taarel had touched me while my head was off among the trees, and they all continue to be aware of this scent or breeze or whatever, even if they haven’t figured out how to focus it. Naturally I haven’t been able to come anywhere close to doing it again, have just been giving myself a headache pushing myself to be able to detect everyone in Pandora and getting increasingly irritated at the group of people in the next room having a meeting about me. I can’t hear what they’re saying, I just know that they’re there. Kaoren and the other people I extra-enhanced at least were stuck having lots of tests too.
He’s so tremendously happy just being able to understand what he was missing, even if he can’t reproduce the effect (yet). We’ve been having a sporadic discussion over the interface about the implications, which are good for me in the long run, but suck in the short term, because every Setari on two planets would naturally appreciate having their connection to the Ena pointed out to them in the same way. Lots of pressure for me to get into whatever you’d call today – a trance state, maybe? Broadening of the mind? They’ve decided the best thing to do is to have me repeat as much as possible of today at Mesiath to try and trigger the expansion.
I call that taking all the fun out of it.
Thursday, August 14
On Schedule
I surprised myself by being able to get all trancey again without a whole heap of frustrating days of trying. Of course, Kaoren knows me more than well enough to work out the best way to achieve the result he wanted, making sure that I spent the morning doing more carting things about so that by the time it was lunch I really wanted a rest, and then getting me to locate and show him the miniature tree-weasels, and then chatting to me for a long while back in our secluded nook before telling me that I should attempt to locate all the Setari, but if I started getting the headaches and stress I was feeling yesterday afternoon to just stop – that the further expansion was quite possibly something I’d only be able to do on an infrequent basis.
Him and his psychological training.
At any rate, making beds and swimming about, and the early Autumn heat and sun had left me very drowsy, to the point where I almost fell asleep leaning against Kaoren’s shoulder. But – especially since I had really liked the sensation of being all expansive – I began looking about for different animals, and found it not at all difficult to follow the same route to expansion. For a while I got caught up trying to sense smaller plants than the trees, but then just pushed out as far as I could.
I didn’t exactly find a limit. I felt I could keep going further, but I started to lose any awareness of what was happening immediately around me, which was a sensation I didn’t like at all. Kaoren and Maze had been staying with me the whole time, calling up squad members two at a time, and I got really confused when it seemed to me that I’d been left alone. I had to kind of push back toward myself, and was relieved when my perception of my immediate surroundings came back. Kaoren and Maze were still with me, along with Halla and Tsur Selkie, who had come along a little before I’d gotten confused.
Drawing back into myself made me realise I was really tired – and there was something on my head. Maze had been talking – and it occurs to me to check my log, because second level monitoring does record sounds when you’re asleep – Maze was talking about whether to try and move me, but broke off when I suddenly lifted my hand and patted at this sensor pad they’d fitted on me. "Tricky," I said (unhelpfully in English) and promptly went to sleep until midday today.
There’s this increasing list of things I can do which they’re too scared to let me do. This one because I stopped registering any higher brain function, and my breath and heartbeats were coming further and further apart. They’re planning another cautious expansion experiment, but not for a couple of weeks.
When Kaoren told me about the postponement of testing, I had to ask: "Is there some kind of order which says don’t let Devlin do dangerous things until after the signing ceremony?" and he told me "There is now."
He was looking terribly tired – he’s sleeping on my lap at the moment. Even after I came back to myself, I was showing abnormally low amounts of brain activity, so he sat with me until I woke up and had been cleared by medical – he says he had a backlog of reports to review anyway. All my good intentions to not worry and stress Kaoren out aren’t making any difference.
On the positive side of things, all the Setari on Muina are now aware of the wind of the Ena or whatever analogy they’re using at the moment. They’d brought a drone along (without telling me) and were getting what readings they could off me and the Setari while I was trancing out. The extra enhancement only lasts while they’re actually in contact with me – if they move away it drops down to the normal enhancement for the usual period. The extra enhancement is also a bit too much for the Setari – it’s not something they can endure for very long at all, and they think it might be dangerous for them to use high-energy talents while enhanced.
And I’m feeling really quite good. No headache, very well rested. Caught up with the latest episodes of The Hidden War (it’s funny that Ghost showed up on Muina about a week after the episode where Ghost arrived in The Hidden War). This new episode aired a few days ago and Mori had already warned me what was in it, but I’d not got around to watching it yet. It was a big double-episode covering everyone getting knocked out by the aether at the Pillar, the retrieval mission, Ghost showing up in my hospital room, and then Kaoren asking me what I’d meant about aether being moonlight. I think these were meant to be separate episodes and they were just showing them back to back because the timing ties up very conveniently with the signing ceremony. The next episode, which will almost certainly be the Muina mission where I give the squads with me security clearance, airs on Tare in two days, which happens to be the day when everyone’s supposed to start arriving here.
It’s only four days until the signing ceremony. And, urg, I just had about a million things added to my schedule. Lunches and dinners with people, tours of sites, an open-air concert, and then the signing ceremony and the celebratory banquet. I pulled my sickie a few days too early, though I suppose I could have a shot at experimenting with mind expansion the day before the signing and then getting to spend the day in bed. I get the feeling just pretending to have a sore throat isn’t going to be enough to get me out of this.
At least, looking at his calendar, they’ve had the sense to schedule Kaoren to be with me all the time. And Maze, it seems.
Bleh, and Fifth Squad’s just arrived.
Friday, August 15
Comedic Set Piece
Woke up just before dawn because I could hear the Ddura making the hunting noise. And then Ghost came pelting out of nowhere, dived under the covers and tried to hide underneath me, all shaking and trembling. When she reached me the note of the Ddura’s call changed, to the confused sound it makes when it’s puzzled about new arrivals and their faked security passes.