Bluebook Session 3b – Secrets

Sunday morning – a week after the Science Fair.

No matter how much Chris tried to convince himself that ‘she’ was a ‘he’, his body still betrayed him. He threw the soiled pants in his laundry bag in disgust and wondered which of the staff made sure she always had a selection of sanitary products in her room, discreetly hidden within her bedside cabinet. Her period was so irregular that Chris was never sure when ‘it’ would happen.

Reality had again ruined his dreams as well, literally. How could he dream of a sexy relationship with a woman when he still had a female body herself? He knew (she knew?) he didn’t have any lesbian tendencies, but he liked girls not boys. Any chance of him being in a relationship was therefore unlikely until he was old enough to undergo treatment. As he dressed, he wondered who the female in his dreams had been – the face of his ‘dream’ date had been indistinct and could have been Patty, Lillie, Angel or even Bubbles. That told him that the dreams’ origin had been hormonal and not an indication of infatuation with anyone in particular. It was time to lock his libido up for another couple of years and just focus on surviving high school.

Gustav started banging on his door. Chris made sure he was fully dressed before he opened the door to his friend. He was holding the latest copy of the monthly school newspaper, the Claremont Clarion, with a “Time Travel or Hallucination?” banner headline, written by Zoe Deren. Underneath it, the incident at the science fair was the main story. Despite what Beaky Hawke had said to her about only reporting facts – something he highlighted with copies of the Weekly World News to illustrate the slippery slope of reporting rumour and innuendo rather than solid facts, Zoe had still managed to slide in the ‘theory’ that the ‘accident’ may have involved time travel. She’d left out the bit about certain pupils apparently being metas, but it was still there if you read between the lines.

Damn, damn and triple damn. Chris’ idea to salt the school Facebook page and Zoe’s email account with alternative stories hadn’t worked. She’d completely ignored the ‘tasty’ stories he’d invented to throw her off the track and continued to work the original story; she was tenacious to say the least.

Gustav was furious, especially as it named everyone who’d been involved, including the two of them.

Chris’ tried to calm his friend down but had to admit, not being allowed off the grounds for yet another weekend had taken its toll on them. They had been grounded until the staff were sure there wasn’t a risk that they would be kidnapped or attacked, again. They were assured that they’d be allowed out the following week. For some reason, the fact that the Balance visit to the school had been cancelled for a few weeks had further upset Gustav, and of course the visit to Old man Summers’ office on Friday hadn’t helped.

Seems Chris’ grades had dropped dramatically since he could no longer access the internet during school hours and as he’d just turned 16 they were giving him the opportunity to put off sitting his GCSE’s until next year if he wanted, though he would still sit the mocks this year and would stay with his current classes regardless. He hadn’t realised how much he’d subconsciously relied on his browsing powers in his old school.

The real surprise was that Gustav was offered the same deal if he wanted it. Apparently, no one actually knew Gustav’s real age. His birth had apparently never been registered, and he’d never actually celebrated a birthday. When he’d been rescued, the Embassy staff had assumed he was sixteen based on his physique and educational achievements and that was why he was placed in the same year as Chris’ but the sessions with Dr Lockheart had revealed that he was likely younger than that though how much it was hard to say. As with Chris’, they did not intend to change his classes.

Afterwards, Chris’ had suggested that Gustav should just pick a date to celebrate as his birthday.

So, next week they would finally be allowed off the grounds and they had a week to decide what they wanted to do about taking their exams… Yay! He muttered sarcastically.

Wednesday morning before break – Xeno-Studies Class.

‘Also’ Rhan briefly mentioned that the Ziru Sirka was currently engaged in an interstellar war between the ‘rebel’ forces led by the Star Khan, Kinan of Zultas and the Empire. Thankfully, this was occurring on the far Coreward and Trailing edges of the Imperium, hundreds of parsecs away from Earth.

There seemed some confusion among the students as to who the good guys were in this situation, with many of the students automatically falling into a Star Wars interpretation of the conflict whereby the ‘good guys’ had to be the Rebels and the Imperium was therefore automatically bad. Something Rhan immediately tried to correct, explaining that there were good and bad on both sides of the conflict.

It didn’t hurt their analogy that the rebels made use of psionic troops. Some of the students then wanted to know if the rebels had their own equivalents of a Han Solo or Luke Skywalker?

Only Gustav seemed to notice the intense anger in Rhan’s eyes and the flinching of her head spines when they mentioned the Star Khan or notice that the older boy with the weird mix of facial features and sad eyes sitting at the back of the class also shuddered at the mention. What was he doing there? He was in the year above them and shouldn’t be in this class with them.

Rhan quickly changed the subject to discuss the spread of Humaniti across Charted Space instead.

The term Humaniti was used to describe the various human races (consisting of Homo Sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans though there may have been others) that were transferred by an unknown species known as the Ancients or Preservers to a hundred worlds across Known Space.

She then explained that although the Ziru Sirka officially hadn’t yet identified the original home world of Humaniti, the depth of evidence to be found on Earth made it the most likely option.

All three human species had once existed here, there was a depth of evidence detailing the evolution of humans which was unique, as well as the fact that so many diseases existed that specifically targeted humans. It was therefore likely that Earth was the original home world of the species. That meant that the Ancient unknown race that had seeded the stars with interfertile humans had apparently visited and kidnapped their original stock from this world, millennia ago.

She then went on to describe how the Ziru Sirka classified the thousands of sentient species into major and minor races with only the Vilani and Zhodani humans currently being classed as major  races (alongside the Fteirle, Droyne and the Unity) though there had been at least 46 other human races classified as minor, including the Zultasians.

Rhan explained that major races were classified as those races that were assumed to have developed the jump drive independently.

As the Ziru Sirka had first made contact at the edge of charted space with Daedalus from Earth who’d arrived there using a starship the Challenger-Wildeman family and he’d constructed and given its superior jump capacity compared with their own, there was little doubt that Terrans would eventually be declared a major race in their own right.

Though, as the Vilani were a methodical race, it might take the Ziru Sirka several decades before that designation was confirmed and possibly centuries before the fact would be known across the whole of charted space.

Later during break, Gustav couldn’t help notice that the same kid was being surrounded by the Amazons. That in itself wasn’t unusual; they were extremely protective of him for some reason, with two of them always nearby whenever he was not in the dorms or in class, but he overheard them say something about a Mr Smith from GREET visiting the school soon which was followed by a lot of angry, covert whispering. Only one phrase was said loud enough to be heard by him, “bounty hunter”.

Surely the Galactic Reception Embassy for Extra Terrestrials didn’t have bounty hunters on their payroll? As the Amazons formed a protective detail around the young man and headed to the administrative offices, Gustav was left wondering what was going on now. Worse, would he ever find out?

The boy had apparently arrived just a few months before them, also out of term-time but Gustav was sure he’d never met him Down Below, though of course if he did attend, his Anonymity Collar would make that impossible to confirm.

Possibly he should ask Chris’ to do a bit of ‘investigation’ on the school system and find out more about the boy. What was his name; Ishugi something-or-other?