The Touchstone Trilogy (135 page)

And one day I am going to figure out a way for the rest of my family to become Muinans as well.  Till then, I hope words will cross galaxies for me.

Letter

Dear Mum (and Dad and Jules and Aunties and Nick and Alyssa and everyone)

I am here, not there, and that's now a choice that I've made.  I'm no longer trying to get home, because this has become home.  I hate that it's an either/or choice, and that there's no way to visit.  I miss so many things, but I'm happy here now, and unless I was sure I could get back here, I can't risk even trying for a quick visit.  I'm hoping for a yearly letter, at least.

I'm glad you had the chance to see Kaoren when you last saw me.  He and I have been engaged nearly four months now.  I think you might like him.  The wedding's scheduled for six weeks after my twentieth birthday.  The long wait was initially because of legal requirements and is pretty meaningless, since we live together already, and are working on plans for getting a house built.  And we have four children!

They're orphans, and kind of adopted us, and we're going through the process of formally adopting them in return.  Ys is the oldest (we think).  She, Lira and Rye are all around eleven.  Sen is four.  They're really great kids, and far less bratty than I ever was.  I'm not really 'Mum' to them, but I feel very parental, and I think we've built up some trust.  Fretting over them makes me want to hit myself for all the times I was a complete bitch to you.

It's been a very dramatic year for me, on top of ending up here in the first place.  I guess you could say I've been gainfully employed, and Kaoren and I are well settled for money, so I'm not having to stress about day-to-day stuff.  It was very hard to adjust at first, particularly because I had to learn a new language, and I was just so outside everything.  But some very nice people took me under their wing and it was a bit like gaining six older brothers and sisters, and I've developed an extended family of people who look out for me.

I'm hoping that one day it'll be easier to get between here and there and it would be great if you could come here.  I've enclosed a bunch of photos of me and the kids and some of the people who are important to me and the place where our house will be.  I had to get my hair cut really short and hate it and hope it grows back quickly.

I love you.  I should have said it a thousand times.  Miss you always.

Always.

Cass.

The End

Glossary

Agowla
- The (fictional) high school Cass attended in Sydney.

AI
- Artificial Intelligence.

Arenrhon
- Settlement at site of underground installation of the Lantarens.

Aspro
- Aspirin.  Headache relief.

Atanra
- A facility constructed near to the Muinan rift into deep-space.  The word means 'passage'.

Authoritah
- This is an indication that Cassandra has watched
South Park
, and not a typo.

Aversan
- The old Muinan name for the platform town discovered in her month on Muina (initially called Goralath by the Tarens).

Beanie
- A close-fitting knitted hat.

Breaking, The
- A Taren term for the disaster which shattered the spaces.

Buckley's chance
- Buckley was a convict in Australia who escaped and survived by living with Australian Aborigines.  The phrase means "nearly impossible".

Café Crescent
- Pandora's first café.

Carche Landing
- The main airport in Unara.

Casszilla
- Rawr!

Caves of Nonora
- A Taren children's story, where Til, Magara and Nosk discover an entrance to the kingdom of the Tarull, deep below Unara.

Channa
- A rocky planet inhabited by ex-Muinans living a nomadic tribal life.  Tare has established a mine on Channa in an area of land isolated from the inhabitants.

Chapstick
- Lip moisturiser.

Chune
- One of the ships KOTIS uses to travel between Tare, Kolar and Muina.

Copped a Serve
- Received a barrage of anger.

Council of Tare
- The Lahanti (mayors) of the cities of Tare.

Cruzatch
- A dangerous humanoid Ionoth, shadow burning white.

Dazenti
- Swarming phasic Ionoth: capable of passing through walls.

Ddura
- An enormous energy being created by the Lantarens.

Deep-space
- The large portion of the Ena which exists between the 'memory spaces'.  It is white in appearance, and filled with gates which open directly to real-space worlds.

Deep-space Ionoth
- Ionoth which are formed and dwell not in the relatively small Spaces, but instead in Deep-space.

Delar
- A Taren measurement unit – roughly 75 centimetres.

Despawn
- Disappear, vanish.  Taken from computer games where a monster is said to 'spawn' when it appears in the game world, and 'despawn' when it disappears (usually after being killed).

Diodel
- One of the ships KOTIS uses to travel between Tare, Kolar and Muina.

Do Not Go Gentle
- "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night", a poem by Dylan Thomas.

Dohl Array
- A series of underwater farms on Tare.

Drone
- An advanced robot, usually used for scanning and monitoring.

Drop Bears
- Important Tourist Advisory: Please wear protective head gear when walking beneath gum trees in Australia.

Ena
- A dimension connected to the thoughts, memories, dreams and imagination of living beings.

Ena manipulation
- A psychic talent which can change the substance of the Ena, particularly in stabilising gates between spaces.  It can also be used in a limited way to change 'reality'.

Expecto Patronum
- Looks like Cass has read
Harry Potter
.

Escort quest
- A mission in an online game involving protection of a non-player character while they travel.

Faer
- The Senior Captain in the Taren entertainment The Hidden War.  Played by Eyle Sured.

Fahr
- Kolaren treacle tea.

Falazen
- A platform town ruled by border collies.

Fan service
- Revealing or provocative shots of characters in anime/manga.

Fanfic
- Fiction based on the stories of others and/or fiction involving a person of whom the writer is a fan.

Firiana
- A platform town east of Pandora, situated among the islands of the surri.

First level monitoring
- Interface monitoring which triggers an alert if certain conditions are reached (eg. loss of consciousness, heart attack).  All residents of Tare are on first level monitoring.

Francesca
- Francesca is a flowering shrub also known as "Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow" because its flowers fade from purple to violet to near-white as they age.

Gate
- A tear or rift between spaces/worlds.

Gate Sight
- A psychic talent which can judge the status of gates between spaces.

Gate-lock
- An enclosure built around a gate from near-space to real-space to prevent Ionoth from passing through.

Gelzz
- A now nearly-extinct cave-dwelling Taren insect noted for its tendency to admit a lingering rotten odour as a defence mechanism.

Goralath
- The name originally given to the ruins where Pandora is later established.

Gorra
- The first island settled on Tare.

Hasata
- A city on Tare.

House Dayen
- One of the leading Lantaren groups on pre-destruction Muina, and architects of the Pillars project.

House Renar
- A Nuran House which was given the care of Sentarestel after her parents' deaths.

House Zolen
- A Lantaren group on pre-destruction Muina believed responsible for the Arenrhon installation.

HSC
- Higher School Certificate.  Received when graduating from high school in Australia.

Ian Thorpe
- A famous Australian swimmer.

In-skin
- An immersive interface experience where most of the senses – sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste – are stimulated.

Interface
- An in-body nanite installation used by Tarens as personal computers/the Taren internet.

Ionoth
- Creatures which form in the Ena, usually remnants of the dreams and nightmares of inhabited planets.

Ista
- An honorific for medical doctors.

Isten
- Professor.

Joden
- The Taren equivalent of a minute, though the unit is longer than an Earth minute.  One hundred joden equal a kasse.

Kadara
- Naturally-forming massive Ionoth.

Kalane
- A medium-sized island city near the Dohl Array.

Kalasa
- The training city of the Lantarens.

Kalrani
- Trainees not yet qualified as Setari.

Kasse
- The Taren equivalent of an hour, spanning approximately two and a half Earth hours.

Kaszandra
- The KOTIS research facility on Kalasa's island.

Keszen Point
- An outlying island of Konna used for warehousing.

Kolar
- A hot, arid world settled by Muinan refugees, and advanced technologically by the Tarens.

Konna
- Both the city and the island where the main KOTIS base is located on Tare.

KOTIS
- An acronym for the "Agency for Ionoth Research and Protection".

Kuna
- Supplementary memory provided by the interface.

Lahanti
- Leaders of the cities of Tare – an equivalent to a 'mayor' of a city-state.

Lantar/Lantarens
- The ruling class of Muina before the disaster.  Powerful psychics.

Lastier
- A fictional equivalent of Kaoren Ruuel from the Taren entertainment The Hidden War.  Played by Teral Saith.

Litara
- One of the ships KOTIS uses to travel between Tare, Kolar and Muina.

Lolcat
- I can haz cheeseburger?

Lord Vetinari
- A most Machiavellian ruler, found in the Discworld books of Terry Pratchett.

Luim
- One of the ships KOTIS uses to travel between Tare, Kolar and Muina.

Machiavelli
- To Cass, Machiavelli is "Lord Vetinari, except real".  Niccolo Machiavelli was an Italian Renaissance writer whose book The Prince sets out a model of political stability achieved through not necessarily moral means.

March of Dawn
- A traditional Muinan ceremony held in Spring.  Flowers are carried to symbolise the birth of a new year.

Massives
- Ionoth of unusually large dimensions.

Mea Culpa
- 'Through my fault' - acknowledging an error/taking the blame.

Mesara
- One of the ships KOTIS has assigned to Muina.

Mesiath
- A southern hemisphere city in a tall tree forest.

Moon Piazza
- An enormous crescent shaped open area at the eastern base of the amphitheatre hill at Pandora.  [Desza Tohl in Taren.]

Muina
- A world abandoned after a disaster brought about by the Lantaren psychics.

Nanites
- A machine or robot on a microscopic scale.

Nanna Nap
- A short nap in the daytime, for the less active grandmothers.

Near-space
- The envelope of Ena immediately surrounding a world, full of reflections of the world as it currently is – and it's most recent nightmares.

Night on Bald Mountain
- A composition by Modest Mussorgsky.  Cass has encountered it in Disney's
Fantasia
.

Nikko Pen
- Permanent marker.

Noob
- A new gamer who does not fully understand how to play/someone new.

Nori
- The main character of the Taren entertainment The Hidden War.  Played by Lanset Kameer.

Not happy, Jan
- A popular phrase taken from an Australian television commercial for Yellow Pages.

NPCs
- Non-player characters – a gaming term for characters in a game which you are not expected to fight.

Nuri
- A pastoral moon inhabited by ex-Muinans.

Nurioth
- One of the largest ruined cities on Muina.

OMGWTF
- Oh my god, what the fuck?!

Oriath
- A Muinan city, ruled by House Zolen.

Ormon of Nent
-  The hereditary ruler of Kolar's northern kingdom.

Pandora
- First Taren settlement on Muina.

PAoN
- Profound Awareness of Nils

Path Sight
- A talent for location.

Pelamath
- An equatorial platform town located on top of a plateau.

Pippin
- A small animal of excessive cuteness.

Pissed off
- Made angry.  ['Pissed' can mean 'angry' or 'drunk' in Australia.]

Public Space
- Virtual décor visible to all interface users/anything accessible to all interface users.

PVP
- Combat in online games where players fight other players rather than computer-controlled opponents.

Pwn
- Defeat comprehensively – a gamer term.

Rotation
- Setari missions in the Ena designed to cover Ionoth respawn near Taren cities.