Log 1 Matter | Antimatter by Selina Brown Page B

but outside the sac. He was
about to ask Aven if that was usual but Korbet was saying, “I
wonder how strong it is? I’m not sure but, technically, you can
spike a plasma impulse to me.” He eyed Ara with a smile. “It’s
called the Aryan Transmission or ArT.” He studied his fingers
again, leaning casually against the pod watching the exergon
disappear into his fingers making deeper connections. He mused a
little, saying, “I should sever it.”
    Jamie watched as Korbet thought about it.
    “I should feel violated you know, normally
you ask to make a link. But—” he grinned down at her “—you are the
Vanguard so as long as you don’t goo or gah too loudly it won’t
distract me.” Looking down at her, Korbet watched as she was moving
her hands and tiny fingers. She made an “ooh” sound.
    Vanguard? Jamie jotted that down on his
list.
    “…you can see plasma energy too. Well, after
a while you’ll be able to ignore it unless you bring it back into
focus…”
    Now that was interesting. Ara could see what
only two others could see, and they were the two she called for:
Korbet West and Kavela Istonia. He knew Kavela was part of a
Pure-Gen pair and he bet that Korbet was fabricated with another as
well. Sure enough, Korbet said something about his brother, Aki.
Aki and Ara. Korbet and Kavela. Seriously?
    “Please let this not be the pattern!”
Muttering, Jamie half listened to the rest of conversation and
noted the male’s exit. The transportal had a strange signature,
which Jamie logged. Shortly, the new family cycled through the
hatches.
    “Aven, before you go, did the other baby make
similar connections?”
    Aven checked and nodded. “Yep … rather, Maya
made the connections. Is that significant?”
    “Don’t know but keep feeding me data like
that.”
     
    Ara watched as her blue strings followed the
man into the black hole. But she saw brown strings too and they
went with him. What did he say? Another body? Why did he have two?
He had two names Korbet/Randall so that made sense to her. She
waved her tiny hand and wondered why she thought it was tiny.
    Within her mind a male said, “I’m
Trickster. What are you doing, little baby?”
    “ Habah.”
    He “smiled” back at her.
    Ara locked that signature away, inside her
mind, along with the time with Korbet in her special place. Maya
tried to connect to Korbet but Ara wanted her special place to be
just hers. Trickster helped her when she showed him Korbet had some
kind of wall in his mind, and he had labelled it “Inner Guardian”.
So Ara told Trickster she wanted her Inner Guardian like that too,
aware the male was close by and accessing the Cardinal Unit’s
mainframe.
    “Oooh.” Trickster, she saw, made sure the
plasma lines split properly by checking with the complex Cardinal
Unit database. Maya was like a big neural hub, connected to
everything and everyone in Aryan Space by plasma nodes and lines.
The Cardinal Unit was where Maya resided and used the CU to “do”
things.
    Ara identified the other energies that came
as waves of excitement entered the nursery. Mechanisms on the hub
opened and closed. Eventually, she heard voices. By their pitch and
volume, the arrivals were happy. They reached her pod and peered
in. Two adults, male aged 689 and female 786, and two older
children, male 256 and female 278, one younger male 123. The Maya
told her they were her family. The older female was pregnant at
around 3 months. She waved her arm in the viscous fluid and saw
more facial contortions, not just smiles, appearing on their faces
at different times as they looked around and at her.
    “She’s smiling at us, Mum.”
    Ara liked the curly, red hair, bright green
cat eyes, and almost “v” shaped eyebrows.
    “She’s very special, Sacha. We’ve been chosen
by the Cardinal Unit…”
    “Goo, gah, gah, ooh.”
    “Maya, Pen.” The voice was deep. “Inferor
Aryans don’t call the Maya the ‘Cardinal Unit’.”
    Inferor? That meant