Tales of Midbar: Exiled Angel

So there I was in agonizing physical pain and feeling more miserable than I ever had, laying on a hillside covered in some grass-like XT photoorganisms, looking up at a clear blue sky with a large red light, obviously Alpha, and a smaller, bright yellow one I didn’t recognize, watching ghosts of the battle I’d just left. Picture this; a fifteen-year old 200cm tall boy, very muscular because I’m a Spartan Angel, naked from the waste up with only rags below, covered in cuts and bruises, a bad wound in my side and I’d lost two fingers on my right hand and had retracted what was left of my wings. I was wet and breathing heavily because I’d just swum as far as I could underwater. A gentle breeze was blowing, drying me but it didn’t make me feel better. Part of me wanted to return and I could still see ghostly images of the enemy’s meca. I tried extending my wings but it just made my back hurt. I’d probably lost most my wing nanites. I remembered what Porsha had told me. She’d been laying on the Pardels’ living room couch, covered in bandages with the older Moon and Pardel kids gathered round and Wolfgang staring at her like he’d never seen a woman before. She’d told us what she knew about the wyoklug and Xanadu and that this was a lot bigger than just Midbar, then she'd pointed at me and said, “Survive and find a way to warn other humans.” That felt like cowardice but I didn’t know how to go back and I’d probably just get killed or captured if I did. I needed to recuperate and get a weapon or, better still, lots of weapons and an army. Two lardins walked up to me, like small bears but with anteni where the eyes should be. They’re normally peaceful and didn’t like phenylalanine although they used L amino acids. Their anteni vibrated frantically, probably weren’t sure what to make of me.

“I am a human,” I said in Crosstalk.

Did they speak Crosstalk? It was a language designed to be more or less pronounceable and audible to a wide range of intelligent life forms but would that work in this universe?

Two strong bursts of psychic energy, quickly faded to very strong vibes. I made a painful effort to look in that direction. Two humans, a dark skinned woman with blond hair and a light-skinned man with dark hair. Even in my weakened state I felt the woman was the most desirable I’d ever seen. They were strangely dressed and seemed unmodded. Never felt vibes like their’s before so I was sure they were anavim. They walked towards me with wide eyes staring at me and their mouths open.

The lardins made some squeeks.

“We’ll take care of him,” said the man. I didn’t recognize the language, it was neither Universal Human nor Crosstalk but somehow I understood.

“My colony was attacked ...” I said. What language was I speaking? Universal Human? “We need help! I must warn other humans!”

“Midbar-Malchut?” asked the Man, this time speaking Universal Human.

The lardins backed away.

“Do you belong to Haprihagfen?” asked the woman, crouching down to look me in the eyes.

“What?” never heard the word before but I was pretty sure it was some organization.

“I’ll just take a look,” said the man and dematerialized with another explosion of psychic power.

The lardins didn’t seem at all phased by this.

“You’re in a terrible state,” said the woman. “Can you stand up?”

“I think so.”

I staggered to my feet, with the woman’s help.

“It will be best to teleport you to our beit but it will be better if you materialize feet down. Where’s Rellin?”

Somehow I knew Rellin was the man who’d been with her.

“How long does it take to check if there’s an attack?” the woman asked, pursing her lips. “I don’t like this.”

“This was an invasion! It was really obvious, I can still see the ghosts.”

She looked around, “Fornication! Why didn’t Rellin just do that?” She stamped one foot. “Anyway, now hold my hand and don’t think of other places. Oh, you’ve already teleported once, if I teleport you, you really should get training so you can control it properly but then you’ll have to live as an anav.”

“Is it bad?”

“What bad?”

“Living as an anav?”

“No, it’s a lot of fun.”

“Then I think that’s OK.”

“Here we go then.”

She already had her hand on my bare abdomen and I suddenly got a weird sensation like having a very strong, painless electric shock.

Is that really where you want to start this?

Yes, it makes sense. Where would you like me to start?

How about your life in Midbar-Malchut?

I'd rather not talk about that.

Well, whatever.

Next moment we were in a small room with white painted walls and a single bed, a few centimeters above the floor. We dropped to the floor which jarred all my wounds and hurt a lot. The woman laid me down on the bed while calling for help. Things got confused. I don't remember very clearly, I think they gave me some sort of sedative that clouded my memory, must have been good considering my nanites! What was left of my trousers were removed and a lot of people came and looked at me, tried various sorts of psychic and technological healing, although I told them I had regenerative nanites. Kept trying to tell them about the wyoklug but they didn't seem to take any notice. Another anav was dispatched to my universe to find Rellin but he didn't return either.

It was very unfortunate. I supposed it was good that we found out that anavim couldn't return from Midbar-Malchut quickly but we lost two good men doing it.

The next thing I remember clearly was laying on a bed in a different room. Picture this; no windows, walls and ceiling seemed to be made of glass, except for one wall, the only one with a door, that looked more like polymer. Various bits of medical looking equipment. Two long haired, bearded men, at least one was a navi but it's hard to tell who vibes are coming from when people are close together, cuddling and kissing each other.

Eww gross!

Heard of such things and knew it was contrary to the religion of my colony. Also heard such people tended to be hostile to our religion and often persecuted us.

These were who?

I learned their names later. The darker one was Clathnior and the lighter, Yanvlis.

"Yuck, do you have to?" I said. "It's an abomination to God." Not too diplomatic but I wasn't thinking too clearly.

Men turned to me, with amused expressions. One had much darker skin than the other and they looked unmodded. One man, touched a wristband, opened his mouth and spoke something unintelligible. Immediately I heard a male voice vibrate through me speaking Universal Human, "Did you bring any women?"

Typical!

Well, in the circumstances, I think it was a good sign.

"What?" I asked.

Still somewhat sore but better than I'd been.

"Play your recording again!" said the other man, again he spoke some strange language but a male voice gave me what I think was the translation.

"What?" I asked.

The light skinned man paced towards me, grabbed my left arm, looked at my wrist and touched something. Remembered I'd lost two fingers on my right hand and checked it. Yes, they'd grown back but still looked rather strange! Knew this was supposed to happen but had never had to test it before. The man took his hand away, I saw I was wearing a similar wristband to him, apparently made of black polymer with a few coloured shapes on it. A yellow spiral was rotating on mine.

A different male voice, somebody who didn't seem to be there, started vibrating through my body, again speaking Universal Human. "Tom, this is very important so listen to all of this before you do or say anything. You're on Midbar but in a different universe from the one you grew up in. We, anavim, that's the sort of psychic you are, call this version of Midbar, Sendracil. The goyim, that's our word for humans who aren't anavim, and the XT's in this universe don't know we can teleport and we'd like to keep it that way. In fact that's true of most universes so if you find yourself in an unfamiliar one with no other anavim, you should assume it to be the case. This universe has a large, mixed species colony but there are only about twenty humans, all male, all either hipsickim or naviim. They will be upset if they discover we have access to women and there are anavot who can teleport here but choose not to. If they ask, tell them you're from the planet Malchut and don't remember how you got here. Fortunately, with all the drugs and nanites in your system, we should be able to chalk any slips up to disorientation on your part. We brought you here because this, sephir, the version of Midbar in this universe, has the best nanotechnology. We've sent two anavim to your sephir, which we call Midbar-Malchut, but they haven't returned. We suspect the XT's are using some very fast acting anti-anav or anti-human weapon. This doesn't have to be terribly sophisticated, lots of thin threads or small objects flying around would do it but it's something we can't detect. We've prayed about this and decided there's nothing we can do in the near future. Probably the only way to get to your universe safely is to leave Midbar but there's no easy way to do that. You were infected with a nano-weapon. Fortunately your own nanites were giving you a fair amount of protection from it. You managed to tell us enough about your nanites for us to figure out which the malicious ones were and destroy them. It turned out that they were a rather different technology from yours, composed mostly of hydrocarbons, carbohydrates and lipids while yours are made mostly of Fullerenes and peptides. Anyway, you should now be on the road to recovery. I should be returning in the next few hours, so try to stay calm, you've been given sedatives, you still need to be trained to teleport or you may do it accidently, with potentially fatal results, if you get too emotional before your training."

[Translation note: Tom is from the Malchut universe and may have heard of Buckminster-Fuller. He certainly knows the word "Fullerene" which is the normal term for certain carbon allotropes in Universal Human. When translated from non-Malchut languages, the word "geodeserine" is used. The words for korbarim, groups defined by psychic genes, in most universes, come from Semic (similar to Hebrew), and therefore obey Semic/Hebrew grammar rules. Hense "anavot" is the feminine plural of "anav". In Malchut, people do tend to use the Hebrew word for the commonest psychic korbar and hence say "navi" instead of the Semic "nibey".]

I got a distinct feeling I'd heard this before, rather like deja-vu but I suspected that I really had heard it.

"You know what's going on now?" asked the man who'd touched my wrist band.

"We're not homosexual," said the other man, "we just don't have any women."

I wasn't entirely sure of this reasoning because the thought of intimate contact with a man disgusted me, still does, "Why don't you make some?"

"How?" asked the smaller, dark skinned man, the one who'd said he wasn't homosexual.

"Obviously construct them!"

[Translator's note: By "construct" Tom means using nanotechnology to make them.]

"We don't have a way to program them," said the lighter skinned man.

Remembered programming was the difficult part with human constructs. My brothers and myself had discussed the possibility of constructing naviot girlfriends for ourselves (this was before I knew I was an anav). What stopped us was the programming problem. Humans constructed as adults or older children (we needed teenage girls) are useless because they don't know how to do anything, like controlling defecation and urination (who'd want a girlfriend like that!). To get round that, they need mental programming, basically false memories of the first fifteen or twenty years of their lives that they hadn't really had. Could be recorded from living people, had to be the same sex, korbar and mod. Possible to make them from scratch or modify a recording but this was notoriously difficult and a badly programmed human construct could be extremely dangerous, especially with powerful mods like Spartan Angels.

"I suppose you have a point," I said, wondering if I could record suitable recordings from women in other universes for them. "How can you get off this planet?"

"I take it you mean a way other than dying," said the dark skinned man sarcastically, "but that would be difficult for you with those regenerative nanites."

"I meant by spaceship, obviously!"

"That's difficult," said the lighter skinned man, "or I doubt many of us would still be here. You basically have to pay some XT's a great deal to take you and there's no guarantee that they won't throw you in the biorecycler or something as soon as they leave the atmosphere. Like most societies with a high level of nanotechnology, the only things of value are ideas and rare elements. Basically anything heavier than iron but the heavier the better."

"I don't have anything," I said, suddenly becoming very sad. "All my stuff is back on Malchut, I think. Everybody I know is ..." suddenly I started feeling a lot better. "... well I don't really know. I've got to warn people about the wyoklug!"

"Never heard of them," said the light skinned man.

"I doubt the XT's will be interested in your nanites," said the darker skinned man. "They're weird, overly complicated and will probably only work on humans, or at least chordates."

[Translator's note: "chordates" is a group of Earth organisms, a phylum of eukaryota, and so excludes all XT's.]