CHAPTER 006
It was the first day of classes, and Elara had absolutely no idea what she should do. Groob didn’t reappear. Nothing else out of the ordinary occurred. Only the chrono-hopper remained to convince Elara that everything she witnessed had really happened. The device was tucked securely in Elara’s uniform pocket. And until Elara could figure out what to do with it, that’s where it would stay.
Not that she had been able to find any time to think about the situation. The first bell of the day had rung at five in the morning. All the other students were ready, jumping to action in uniform, while Elara dragged behind trying to keep up with her classmates. In this instance, that metaphor turned literal as the first activity of the day was a quick jog around the entire ship.
Exhausted, sweaty, and irritated by the end, the next morning ritual was a pledge to the Galactic Affiliation. It was like nothing Elara had ever heard before, though it seemed clear that most of the other students were familiar with the words—part of the training packages everyone had been sent over the summer.
To the Seven Systems, I declare, my loyalty and my promise,
To uphold the laws that ensure peace, prosperity, and survival of all.
I will trust.
I will respect.
I will obey.
And because of this, I will be safe.
As the students recited the pledge, massive monitors displayed a swirl of imagery. Images of the greatest cities of the Alliance, of the fields of the farm worlds and the mountain-size mines of resource-rich planets, all ending in a projection of a masked face wearing a dark hood. This was the new head of education—the mysterious figure known as the Watchman.
Elara couldn’t help but stare at the image, wondering exactly who was behind that mask. There were several races in the galaxy that used masks and hoods to hide their features, either for spiritual reasons or for protection from the elements. Maybe he was one of those?
Regardless of his origin, the Watchman’s message was clear: discipline, dedication, and most of all, loyalty to the Affiliated Worlds. These video messages rotated in and out of large screens in every room. And every now and again, the masked face of the Watchman would appear, with a fist raised in a salute and the bold letters TRUST emblazoned below.
The first actual class involving terraforming was held in the early morning. Each student was given a selection of spores and tasked with designing a soil that would support germination.
Elara’s spores appeared to be a form of fungus—some kind of mushroom. Elara used the control panel on the biosphere she had been given to add more moisture to the soil—not too different from how she had helped Danny. But instead of making things colder, she increased the ratio of peat moss mulch in her soil mixture and added a layer of sandy soil under the richer dirt. Combined, these brought the temperature up by six degrees Celsius. Then she added some nutrients and shade, since mushrooms thrive in darkness.
The spores were bioengineered for accelerated growth. Elara’s grew quickly, reaching their peak growth in about fifteen minutes. Boom. Instant mushrooms. At that point, the job shifted. Elara now had to treat the mushrooms as if they were a threat to the ecosystem and devise a way to halt their spread.
To do this, she brought the ambient light up, as well as the heat. With a quick sprinkle of lime and a thin layer of pea gravel, the extra moisture she had added vanished. The mushrooms died off just as quickly as they had grown.
Sabik was not having as easy of a time.
The Suparian had been tasked to grow, and then extinguish, Muddrakion tentacle root. This parasitic plant was found on worlds with no magnetic core, which normally protects the biosphere from solar radiation. Mutant plants like the tentacle root were a common, and dangerous, threat.
“You need some help, Sabik?” Elara asked.
Sabik’s response was to turn a darker shade of blue and squeak out one sound. “Glrk,” he said. The Suparian’s feet were no longer touching the ground. The tentacles of the plant had wrapped around his throat and lifted him into the air.
The teacher of the class floated over—a smaller, pearly white robot called B3-09307i. The teacher had one delicate-looking arm that was affixed to its back, and the face display flickered a calm smile.
“Tsk. Those tentacle roots are certainly tenacious,” the teacher intoned sweetly. “Hold very still, Sabik. Your dilemma is not lethal.”
The teacher’s arm unfolded, revealing a simple hypodermic needle attachment. With a quick move, the robot jabbed the needle into the tentacle root near Sabik’s throat. The plant responded instantly, shaking at first, then relaxing. Slowly Sabik was lowered to the ground, visibly shaken.
“As you can all see,” the teacher said with a smile, “even simple tasks can have grave consequences if you do not take careful steps to ensure your safety.”
Elara shifted in her seat, feeling uncomfortable.
“Don’t worry,” B3-09307i said. “We are here to protect you.”
Shortly after the first class of the day, Knot and Clare were finally allowed out of quarantine. For a very brief moment, Elara forgot about how weird it was to be going to school on a spaceship. The thing she had been waiting for all summer was finally happening. She was finally reuniting with all her friends.
“What were your conditions?” Beezle asked as she hugged Knot. “We were very concerned about your happiness!”
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” Knot grumbled before talking about it at length. “I mean . . . it wasn’t bad. We were comfortable and everything. But it was so very frustrating.” The Grix let out a deep stony sigh before continuing in her surprisingly melodic voice. “If the life support on these schoolships is really so unready, why aren’t we just planet-side somewhere?”
“Is that why they have you wearing that collar?” Sabik asked, poking at the thick, semitransparent band around Knot’s neck.
“Yes, this dreadful thing!” Knot shook her head. “It’s to monitor my bio-signs to ensure I’m not having any negative reactions to the artificial environment. Tsk . . . really! I have been on seventeen different worlds—never a single problem. But now everyone’s concerned!”
Clare was there, too. Knot had carried her in a backpack and placed her against a section of wall. The large rectangular yellow sponge also wore a collar, though on her it was more like a strap. After all, she had no actual neck or waist or limb or anything like that. Beezle was sitting next to Clare, whispering softly to the cube. Clare showed absolutely no sign that she was aware of anything. But she never really did.
Elara and her friends filtered into another classroom. This was to be a fairly basic class on planetary orbit shifting. Taught by a floating green-and-orange robot called CZ-833, the class was split into several teams, each one working on a holographic model of a planet. The goal was to alter the rotational axis to try to evoke a meteorological response, or rather, change the weather.
Elara and her friends formed a team, along with a friendly, dark-haired, gender-neutral Takkonite named Xavie that none of them had ever met.
“It is generally considered conducive,” Beezle mused, “to shift a planetary axis by a minimal amount—no more than a degree or two.”
“Yeah, but look.” Sabik reached out and shifted the holographic image of the planet. “What if we did something way more dramatic like . . . this!” He stabbed at the hologram, adding a wobble to the rotation.
“Then everything on the planet dies,” Knot said matter-of-factly.
“What if—” began Xavie.
“Hey . . . guys . . . I need to tell you something,” Elara interrupted. “Groob appeared in my dorm last night.”
Sabik groaned. “Oh no . . . not that guy again. We really don’t need any more time travel drama.”
“Our experiment . . . ?” Xavie tried to interject.
“It doesn’t matter,” Elara snapped. “We’re talking about something big! Something important!”
“Honestly, Elara . . . ,” Knot said as her mouth twisted into a frown, “can’t it wait until after class?”
Elara glanced around. Their teacher was on the far end of the classroom. She shook her head. “It could be a while before we have this kind of privacy again. Look. Something is off. I mean . . . they closed STS!”
“We already talked about this . . . ,” Sabik hissed. “It’s obviously not good. But we’re safe here. You have to admit, last year was all kinds of crazy. How many times did we almost die?!”
“Hunh?” said a very confused Xavie, who had never met, or even heard of Elara and her friends.
Knot shrugged. “Sabik is right, Elara. I don’t like this very much. But there are good reasons for the changes. So . . . what are we supposed to do about it?”
“Something!” Elara hissed back.
“That is very vague,” Beezle said.
“Elara . . . ,” Knot added, placing a heavy stone hand on the shoulder of her friend. “You have to admit, we’ve all been through a lot. And I only just got out of quarantine. Can’t we just . . . take it easy? For a little bit?”
Elara pushed away Knot’s hand. “Take it easy? A time traveler showed up in my dorm! He said . . . well, I think he was warning me!”
“What?” Xavie said, confused. “I don’t understand this at all.”
“You think it was a warning?” Sabik asked.
“It was unclear, okay?” Elara said, shooting a glare at her four-armed friend.
“So what’s the problem?!” Sabik retorted. “What, Elara? We can’t just start worrying without any good reason!”
“Besides,” Knot added. “It would be nice to have a relaxing school year. One where we actually focus on our schoolwork.”
“I, too, would like to learn things,” Beezle added.
Elara narrowed her eyes. “But Groob . . . A time traveler doesn’t just show up in someone’s dorm room and then vanish because everything is okay! He even said everything is ‘bad’! His words, not mine!”
“And so what?!” Sabik argued. “I mean . . . he’s a time traveler! If there’s a problem, he’s way more equipped to deal with it than we are!”
Elara stood up, glaring in Sabik’s face. “We have to help him!”
“With what?!” Sabik glared back.
Knot grabbed them both and forced the two friends apart. “Stop it. Both of you.”
“You are being very bad friends,” Beezle added.
“Sabik, we have to trust what Elara said. She’s our friend and we have to,” Knot said with a stern voice.
“Good!” Elara said with exasperation. “Finally. Now we need a plan—”
Knot turned toward Elara. “No,” the Grix added, a rumble in her voice. “What we need to do is get our class work done. Then we need some rest. Then we can see if maybe—MAYBE—there is something we should be doing.”
Elara sat back down, feeling sullen. There was a long pause. The tiny holographic planet continued to whirl in place, wobbling as it did thanks to Sabik’s interference.
“I think . . . ,” Xavie finally said carefully, “. . . that I should probably find a different study group.”
Class ended. Elara’s group was the last to finish, and by then their little planet looked horribly depressed, covered in ice, and fragmenting in several places.
“I just think you would feel better if you relaxed a little,” Knot said to Elara as the group walked to their next class.
Elara crossed her arms and let out a snort. “Pff! I would love to relax! But something . . . something isn’t right here! I can feel it!”
“Yes,” Knot said, adjusting the uncomfortable collar around her neck. “It all sounds very serious. But life is often serious. We must not exhaust ourselves.”
“I’m not exhausting myself!” Elara said, her chin stuck out defiantly.
“Yeah,” Sabik said, glowering at Elara, “but you’re not the only one here.”
Elara narrowed her eyes, pulled her books up to her chest, and walked past her friends and down the ship’s corridor to the next class.