The Watchers: A Space Opera Novella
Contents
Announcing an Exciting New Novel Series!
Underwater Restorations Free Preview
Jeffrey A. Ballard currently releases a new story every other month. If you want to be the first to know when a new story becomes available (and receive a free exclusive story available only to newsletter subscribers and occasional other goodies) you can sign up for his mailing list at:
http://tinyurl.com/jaballard
. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Slip
.
Music booms through the crowd, swirls, pirouettes, and weaves its way through the club, binding them as one. They dance in rapturous delight, the rhythm guiding them, the beat keeping count. Their bodies heat the air, sweat drips off them forgotten, the air shimmers overhead, the lights mix and combine their auras.
Find the potential instigator
.
It’s too loud, there are too many
.
The speakers pump more of the elixir into the air, higher and higher, driving them faster and faster. The floor shakes in rhythm. A group of women dance as a subgroup, forming a circle within an organized chaos. One wears a sheer sleeveless top, casually brushing the woman’s arm next to her. She moves to the beat, but her thoughts are elsewhere—a suitor, a fight. They were fighting about her spending time with an ex-lover, the woman next to her: Yvonne. The woman slows her dancing, looking around confused.
Too Deep
.
Slip
.
Vehicles honk, people shout, nighttime. The street is packed with street vendors selling food. The crowd ebbs and flows around them, cell platelets moving through the veins of the city. Two hundred individual minds, two hundred individual needs, goals, desires.
Find the pickpocket
.
It’s too many, I can’t
.
Split your mind. Do it
.
Three teenagers look for a cheap snack. A father searches for a disobedient daughter. A man sells some type of street-food wrap, hoping to break even and make a profit tonight. A traveler kills time. A wife delays going home. A couple wanders aimlessly on a first date.
Split more
.
A musician worries about new competition on the south side. His rent is due soon, and he hopes to cover that tonight. The new competition is nervous—it’s his first night playing, and he doesn’t know what to expect from the crowd or his fellow musicians. He has heard that musicians can be territorial, so he had bought a weapon, a knife—purchased earlier that night, from the third stall on the main boulevard. The proprietor doubted the man’s claim of ornamental, but sold it anyway. He has to pay for his gifted kid’s private school that wouldn’t provide a full scholarship. A woman passes by, her right shoe is pinched. She had bought them in haste; her screaming child had rushed her.
Split more
.
Kimiko walks through the street on her way to meet friends—Audria is showing up; Kimiko hates her. She has this stupid false little laugh that grates on Kimiko. It reminds Kimiko of her mother turning into a phony around other people. Meryl seeks something light to eat—her lunch eight hours ago wasn’t enough; she worries about what Jerald thinks of her stomach. She’s caught his eyes wandering a number of times to prettier girls. They’ve been together for two years now, why hasn’t he proposed? Willie paces the street for food, something cheap. The sizzle of meat juices dripping down from a turning spit attract his attention. His stomach rumbles at the savory smell, the roasting fat melting into the meat, the cracked pepper and salt forming a delicious crust. He needs to hurry though; he has to get back to studying—exams are tomorrow, and if he doesn’t pass his father might cut him off. Willie dislikes studying law, but his father is a lawyer, and when he graduates, he has a guaranteed job. It’ll pay well; maybe then in his free time, with cash, he can pursue what he really loves—painting.
The crowd slows as one and comes to a stop. They look at each other in confusion and share one thought: what’s happening?
Too deep
.
Slip
.
***
I rip the neural patches off my scalp. The quick tears of the adhesive are nothing compared the tendrils of a migraine only beginning to form. I slide out of the metal consciousness projector and fall to my knees on the sterile white floor, holding my head. “How, how can you do that?”
“You think two hundred is bad?” Joslyn, my teacher and mentor, asks, irritated with my failures. She’s already disengaged herself and come to stand over me, all five-foot-two of her. “Try hundreds of thousands, millions, skimming along top of them all, looking for that one thought that could lead to Unification.”
“My head … ”
“You went too deep. What happens when you go too deep?” She had switched to her lecture voice, the light from overhead reflecting off her white, bald scalp.
I hate that voice. “My neural patterns mix with the subjects’ and … ” Damn, that hurts—a particularly brutal throbbing digs in behind my left eye.
“That is right—!”
Oh, god, she’s shouting. I clamp my hands over my ears, her lightly tilted voice burrows through, amplifying the migraine.
“—Your neural patterns mix with theirs, and when your head tries to stitch your own back together, it has to work for it!”
“Stop— Stop shouting. Triptanites please.” I lay curled on the floor in the fetal position, eyes closed, my hands still over my ears.
“No. This is your punishment, remember this next time. We’re to meet with the Regency Ambassador at sixteen hundred. I expect you there.” She leaves, the sliding doors giving their pneumatic hiss and
ka-tish
seal. If it were possible, I’d say the door just sided with Joslyn.
I check my forearm display: sixteen hundred, three hours away. Three hours of throbbing, three hours of pain building to a crescendo.
At least she had stopped shouting.
***
“Ambassador
Elkier,” Joslyn says. “We welcome you to Watch Station. May your stay be fruitful and comfortable.”
The three of us stand in a conference room on the edge of Watch Station, on the side that faces toward the Saera system. The viewing port captures the vastness of space, the closest planet only a little larger than the surrounding stars. I think they put Watch Station in the middle of nowhere because of our nature. But leave it to Watchers to use that to their advantage, to remind diplomats how very far away they are from anything.
But we’re not without kindness. Space is a vacuum, the air from the oxygen generators is dry and tasteless in a space station. This can cause anxiety in some and discomfort in most. So we flavor the air with scents from the visitors’ home world—in this case, the Regency capital planet Elang. The smell is almost musty, more dried plant matter on the air than others I’ve sampled; it smells of heat and metal.
Thankfully, I can savor the scent. Renya, an acolyte and good friend, took mercy on me and snuck me some triptanites. The searing migraine has receded.
“Thank you, Watch Director Joslyn, Watcher Emre. May my stay be fruitful for all of us.”
Outwardly, Joslyn continues in that calculated posture of greeting someone from the Regency, pleasant, controlled. Inwardly, I know she has turned wary. He didn’t complete the standard greeting. In the subtle language of diplomacy, he had just told us that this meeting would contain an unusual request and a bribe—not good for a first meeting; they generally try this on the third or fourth.
The Ambassador Liaison is new—they almost always are when a new Regent is elected. His skin is a darker mocha then mine, perhaps coffee with only one creamer instead of two—from Easbei perhaps. It didn’t matter once he was in the official Regency role, kind of like us. But Easbei is one of the planets I had narrowed down to be my home world.
Easbei’s air had smelled sweet to me, like a morning walk through the arboretum and botanical park in the fall, when the air was dry, and the plants had not yet cycled but were close. But it doesn’t have that sharp, spiced floral scent I had to come to associate with home. That floral scent was my only memory of home really.
“As you wish Ambassador,” Joslyn says. “Please have a seat.” We move toward the oval table in the center of the room. There’s a light swish from the fabric of our pants as we move. Joslyn and I wear simple, comfortable clothes, black loose-fitting slacks and full-length lightweight shirts. Hers is an off-white and mine is sky-green—my favorite color for as long as I can remember. Besides our bald heads, there’s nothing to signify that we’re Watchers.
The Ambassador takes a seat in the middle of one side of the oval table. The red robes of his office rustle and catch on the metal arms of the brown, natural leather chair. He is still getting used to the robes and his office—sitting where he did is a mistake if he wants something from us. If there was only one of us, the most natural place to sit would be across from him, confrontational.
Joslyn gracefully sits at the apex of the oval facing out toward the stars to try and mitigate some of that, while I take a position roughly across from him so he has to turn his head to see either me or her. Thus, either of us can observe him, while he can only observe one of us at a time.
I think he realizes his mistake as soon as we sit, but doesn’t take any steps to correct it. For an awkward twenty seconds, no one says anything. Joslyn holds a serene face of polite interest—a face I try to emulate—while the Ambassador’s eyes glance here and there, the only sign of his discomfort—not too bad.
We have learned that the first to speak in these situations immediately puts the speaker at a disadvantage. So we wait. We are Watchers. We are used to waiting—there’s a reason we’re called that.
And so we wait, and I continue to study the man. He is bald by choice, while we are bald by necessity in order to attach the neural patches of the consciousness projectors. His ears tuck close to his skull, and the main lobe droops. His nose is narrow and flares out at the end, much like mine. It’s almost like looking into a foggy mirror; I want to ask him if he can roll his tongue to see if we are related. But that’s forbidden.
His left thumb twitches. “Regent Teife sends his regards. He regrets that he could not come himself.”
“We warmly accept his regards,” Joslyn says, “and wish him well in lawfully guiding the Galactic Regency to continued prosperity.” A subtle reminder of the laws we are bound to, the laws the Regent and his staff were thoroughly briefed on when he took office.
“I will pass along your kind words.” He hesitates half a second before continuing. “Although, this business on Atainun troubles him.” Awkwardly done.
Joslyn answers, “Child mass murders are of great concern to the Regency and the Regency Investigative Unit. It is unfortunate that he should have to face one so early in his tenure.” I nearly smile. She just told him it's not in the jurisdiction of the Watchers, such things have always happened and Regent Teife has a shelf life. These discussions come naturally to Joslyn. The rumor is, she is—or was—a daughter of the Royal Family—diplomacy hardwired into her DNA. The Ambassador is severely outmatched.