Chapter 08: Dr. Kim visits her parents and her precaution measure-taking is tested

Besides having the distinction of being one of the closer systems to Old Earth, Plei is an otherwise unremarkable system. Home to one planet of the same name, Plei has been an autonomous member of Intersyst and a developing system for around thirty years. Plei was originally an expansion colony developed through a joint charter awarded to the Bizirra system government, the Human Federation’s most developed agricultural system, and the Gaea Food Group, the largest human agricultural distribution company, by the Human Federal Government at the very end of the Collaboration era. Although home to a range of climates, Plei is classified as a wet planet: holding an ideal balance of fresh surface water and arable land. This made it the ideal system to be colonized by the Bizirra-Gaea joint charter who intended to export its crops to the relatively infertile strategic and mining resource colonies in the nearby Purian Confederation at low cost and with large margins. However, with the Purian withdrawal from Intersyst at the beginning of the Schism era, Plei’s agricultural output had to be shipped to the core human systems at significantly greater cost much to the joint charter members’ chagrin. With Plei’s development proving more costly than originally expected, the members of the joint charter focused on helping Plei obtain independence in order to pass the responsibility for development from the Bizirra system and the Gaea Food Group, to the much larger Intersyst, resulting in Plei obtaining independence a little over thirty years ago, well into the Modern era and with trade to the nearby Purian colonies restored.

Lauren’s childhood home was located on a midsized family farm near the border between a large agricultural clearing belonging to the planetary capital Tsae to the north and an even larger forest to the south. Looking south, an impressive, monolithic structure could be seen rising above the canopy of trees, one of many abandoned, impervious structures sprinkled across the planet, reminders of Plei’s heritage as a first wave colony. Halfway through the two hour drive to the capital stood a Sentinel satellite array, eternally looking away from the combined galaxies, combing the void in search of extra-galactic threats. The occasional thundering of a freighter streaking through the sky hinted at the position of a spaceport three hours by car to the east of the capital. Located in the middle of the continent, the nearest ocean was a three hour flight away. Being the middle of wheat, formally known as LM-23, harvesting season, the landscape was clothed with a shifting quilt of gold and brown stretching from the forest to the south to the gentle rolling hills to the north as the different farms steadily harvested each of their fields. The buildup to the civil war in the neighboring Jezebel system, also an agriculturally-oriented planet, caused it to miss several key shipments of grain to the nearby Purian colonies who were now willing to pay a pretty penny to the farmers of Plei to make up the difference. Thus the farms around Lauren’s home opted to forgo their usual crop diversity to capitalize on this windfall.

Lauren woke up to see the sky blue ceiling of her childhood room. She found it strange that the ceiling she grew up looking at every morning was now less familiar to her than the ceiling of her cramped studio apartment in Sanmachi even though she was already a few days into her vacation. Lauren looked around her room and felt comforted by the fact that it was virtually unchanged since she left for Tsae National University. Her parents, having more rooms than they knew what to do with, had converted her room into a quasi-sanctum. Lauren took a moment to stretch before getting out of bed to look around her room in more detail and reminisce on the memories contained in it before getting breakfast.

Lauren walked across her room to her two bookcases and surveyed their contents. Along the top shelf were her textbooks on anthropology such as Contextualizing the First Human Colonial Era within Supercontinentalism, Precolonial Purian History, The Youmen Reformation Era, and History of Intersyst: Foundation and Collaboration Eras, as well as books on programming for both assembly and high level languages. On the next two shelves were her textbooks and workbooks on language: Human Consolidated Language levels I-V, Universal Phonetic levels I-V, Youmen Unified Language levels I-III, and Teach Yourself Imperial Hyperian. Near the top of the other shelf were Lauren’s crafts and hobby books including Hill’s Illustrated Guide to Farming and Gardening which every child on Plei received, Cosmitech Guide to Electronic Prototyping, and Kiv Athletics Rock Climbing Handbook. Populating the lower shelves of the two bookcases were volumes of teen and young adult novels: Killer in Amezial, Contraband Hunter: The Missing Midfreighter, Kingdom of Wielders: The Frost General, Ballad of the Caldera: A Youmen’s Determination, The Last Couple of the First Colony, and The Vacation of Earth.

On top of the bookshelves was a stack of diaries that Lauren maintained up through high school. She opened one to a random page and read the entry.

I finally got into Ancient Building South-2. It turns out the far side of the building has lots of drainage pipes jutting out of the facade that made climbing fairly easy. I also found out that the building was taller than I made it out to be but I made it to the top just the same. The photos I took of the building from the airplane during last year’s vacation made it look like there was an opening on the top of the building which I was very glad to find to still be the case. The opening was a trapdoor, too large to just be for people but also too small for aircraft. At the bottom of the shaft was a large spring loaded platform although it barely gave under my weight, climbing gear and all. As I walked through the hallways, I tried all of the light switches. None of them worked but between all of the status lights behind the maintenance panels and the constant humming I knew that this building was electrically alive. As I climbed down, I noticed another sound, that of rushing water. Even though I had come here looking for usable cables for my universal connector box, I decided to follow the sound. After a lot of stairs, I eventually came to a room that was too large for my flashlight to illuminate fully. Taking a picture with the strongest flash setting on my phone however showed me that I was looking over a huge cave populated with water wheels for generating the electricity of the building. It was a good thing I used my phone to get a better look because it gave me a chance to see that I needed to start getting back home to avoid getting in trouble with my parents.

Lauren closed her diary and set it back on the stack on the bookshelf before directing her attention to the other side of her room. There stood her artifact case, a bookshelf with glass doors holding various objects she recovered while exploring first colony wave structures, mostly the one south of her home: various keys some of which she found the doors to, the corpse of some ancient robot, strangely shaped tools, and most importantly, several tangled bundles of cables which she studied while making her Benji based cable connecter.

Lauren found her parents, Sovanna and Wekesa Kim, sitting on the rear deck of their house overlooking the fields. For the past week, the deck had served as a command center for their harvest. Wekesa stood at the railing looking out at the field through a pair of binoculars while Sovanna was seated at a small table updating a spreadsheet on her laptop, behind which were a cold half-cup of tea and some stale crumbs of a bagel.

“Honey,” said Wekesa, adjusting the focus of his binoculars.

“Hm?” said Sovanna, fiddling with a camcorder.

“One of the harvesters hasn’t moved for the past five minutes.”

“Which one? Harvey or Harley?”

“Harley.”

“It’s probably just waiting for the grain hopper to come back to it.”

“The grain hopper is right next to it.”

“Then it probably means that Harley’s lidar sensors need to be cleaned.” Sovanna polished the lens of her camera, “I don’t think we’ve applied dust repellant to the sensor modules in a while.”

Lauren’s mother, Sovanna, came to Plei from her home system, Bizirra, in search of work, eventually becoming an assistant operations manager for one of Gaea Food Group’s larger commercial farms. And she hated every day of it, being someone that likes to think about things rather than doing them herself. So running around GFG’s complex, putting out fires (metaphorical although sometimes real), and getting her hands dirty (figuratively and literally) everyday was a constant source of frustration in her life. As a sign of her aversion to farm work, she kept her smooth black hair long and straight, a hairstyle that is prohibited when working with heavy machinery. On the other hand, Wekesa’s blond hair was kept short so that no matter how unruly it was, it never got in the way of what he was doing. Wekesa left behind a life as a detective for the Capital City Police Department on Altaria in search of a more down-to-earth lifestyle. Fortunately, he liked to be as directly involved as possible with whatever he was doing, from farming to parenting.

Lauren stepped out onto the balcony, eliciting creaks from the wood underfoot.

Sovanna whirled around in her chair, aiming the camera at her daughter.

“Oh! and here she is!” narrated Lauren’s mother.

Lauren, uncomfortable with having something pointed at her, shied away from the shot.

“Aw come one,” said her mother, “you used to be so photogenic.”

“You just caught me off guard,” replied Lauren.

“Did you sleep well?” asked Wekesa, putting down the binoculars and turning around.

“Yes,” said Lauren.

“No nightmares?”

“No,” said Lauren, “not this time at least.”

“That’s good to hear,” said Wekesa.

Sovanna sat up in her chair, “Lauren, how is your search for a partner going on Daiterra?”

“I haven’t really been looking that much, mom,” replied Lauren.

“Ihar actually asked how you were a while back,” said her father, “I’m pretty sure he is still interested in you.”

Lauren smiled at the thought of her high school classmate, “still? Poor guy. It’s too bad he’ll never leave this planet. What is he up to now?”

“Finishing up his residency in the capital,” said Sovanna, “but you do know quite a few people on Daiterra, right?”

“What about the guy you went to grad school with?” asked Wekesa, “Neil I think was his name?”

“Neil is youmen,” explained Lauren yet again, “besiders, we’re explicitly friends.”

“Darn,” said her father, “well, try and see more people, yeah? Shouldn’t be too difficult, people in youmen cities are really connected right?”

“They are,” said Lauren, “just give me some time to get settled into my job.”

All of the windows of the kitchen area had been opened to allow an early summer breeze to provide some natural cooling. Two hunting rifles were mounted on the wall behind Lauren, the larger one belonging to her father and the smaller being Lauren’s childhood rifle which she received at the tender age of 15. Her father endorsed Lauren’s carefree attitude for everything except guns. Indeed, even as a child, Lauren regarded firearms with grave respect, acting like a completely different person when they were around. Not only was the ammunition hidden from Lauren, but also the breech block and even the barrel when she was younger. To this day, Lauren did not even know the location of the safe that contained the breech block and bullets.

Lauren and her parents were seated around a small table for lunch. Lauren was regaling her parents with recent stories from Sanmachi.

“And there is this store, Snaptic Mart, which is just a fancy convenience store, but all my friends that are youmen that I talk to love it,” said Lauren.

“And what do your human friends think of it?” asked her mother.

“None of them are big fans of it.”

“Hm. Maybe if you knew more people that are human you would be able to say something more definitive about this store,” said Sovanna.

“Mom,” said Lauren, seeing where her mother was taking the conversation.

“I’m just saying,” said Sovanna, “you need to look up from your work once in a while and put yourself out there. It should be easy to find someone you like. Never have I met someone as strong, smart, kind, brave, or beautiful as—”

“Hey!” protested Wekesa.

“What?” said Sovanna.

“I’m not even one of those things?” he said.

“Not even close, honey,” responded Sovanna.

“Well maybe now, but what about when we met?” said Wekesa.

“I love you, but no.”

Lauren couldn’t contain her amusement any longer and began to laugh.

“Now there’s a smile!” said her father triumphantly, “It’s great to see you able to laugh at something after your mission, even if that something is me. But your mom is right. I remember one time you got sent home because you got in a fight with the bully in your class and I was worried for you. But then the principal told me that you got sent home because you were being suspended for the day because you decked him with a book.”

“He did start that fight,” said Lauren, “at least that’s how I remember it. I kind of feel bad for it now.”

“We had to replace that book too,” said her mother, “oh and don’t forget all of the hackathons you won for Tsae National U?”

“Yeah, most of the hackathons changed their rules after you graduated because all of the other schools started complaining,” added her father.

“Wow, I didn’t know that,” said Lauren. “I feel like it might have been better if I lost some of them though.”

Her parents exchanged a glance.

“What makes you say that?” asked Wekesa gently.

“I might have learned something more useful than how to make an energy meter for wielders.”

“But you have learned a lot,” said Sovanna, I know you rarely get the feeling that you’ve grown but that’s because you’re witness to yourself everyday, so small changes are hard to notice even when they transform who you are. From where I stand, you are a very different person than the one we took to the spaceport way back then. Mind you I mean that only in every positive way.”

“Our unstoppable one,” said Wekesa.

“Until that mission,” said Lauren.

“Lauren,” reproved her mother.

“Now one bump in 30 years is a pretty good track record,” said Wekesa, “better than mine when I was on the force.”

“And it was just a bump,” added Sovanna, “you haven’t actually stopped yet. Look, I know things look bad right now, probably because they are—”

“Well,” protested Wekesa.

“—but you’ll get over it,” continued Lauren’s mother, “I know you will, I’m not worried.”

“Yeah, you’re okay and that’s what matters,” said Wekesa. He turned to Sovanna, “also you never worry about her.”

“Because I don’t have to,” said Sovanna, “I worry about you all the time.”

“And I’m not worried about myself, therefore…” said Wekesa.

Lauren found herself cracking up at another of her parent’s performances, feeling better even if she wasn’t necessarily convinced by their argument.”

Lauren sat at the kitchen table, cleared of food and now strewn with items from her artifact case. After lunch, her parents had returned to the deck and she could hear their chatter about the status of the harvest. Lauren was enjoying herself, being able to identify most of her artifacts: what they were called, what they were used for, and when they were made, at a glance. As a child, the parts held so much mystery, leading her to come up with so many imaginative hypotheses about them, which she now knew were almost entirely wrong. Still, some parts she could not identify, even after consulting the HTG’s encyclopedia, which served to maintain the mystique of her work and remind her to someday formally explore the ruins on Plei as an Archival Officer.

Lauren looked up from her magnifying glass to see her parents coming in from the deck, her father with the binoculars around his neck and her mother with a laptop tucked under her arm.

“Finish the harvest?” asked Lauren.

“Yup, all of the grain is in the silos,” replied her father, “which means we can now start thinking about our next challenge.”

“Dinner,” answered her mother.

“Yes,” said her father, “your mom forgot to defrost the meat yesterday and—”

“You forgot,” corrected Sovanna.

“We forgot to defrost the meat yesterday,” continued Wekesa, “so we need to go hunting while there is still plenty of daylight left.”

“Ren, can you please go with your father?” said Sovanna.

“I’m fine on my own,” stated Wekesa.

“People have seen mole-bears in the forests lately.”

“I know that. Look, it’s up to you, Lauren, either way is fine,” said Lauren’s father.

Lauren pondered for a moment before deciding going out as a pair was necessary given the time of day. “I’ll come with,” she said.

Lauren talked with her father as he drove the two of them into the forests to the south of their home.

“Yeah, so as your mom said,” continued Wekesa, “some trappers and rangers have sighted mole-bear tracks in these forests.”

Mole-bears, as they were colloquially known, were the largest animals endemic to the forests of Plei’s heartland. Despite their name, mole-bears were not fast diggers. Being ambush predators, they did however dig holes just large enough to conceal themselves beneath the forest floor. In addition to making up for their lackluster stamina and inability to climb or swim, this behavior also had the benefit of allowing the fiercely territorial animal to hunt for food outside of its own territory. Mole-bears have demonstrated a high level of attention to detail, going as far as to rearrange unearthed foliage on top of their head before settling into their hole. Given the mole-bear’s capacity for stealth, an essential duty of forest rangers was to plant brightly colored stake flags in regular grids all along designated trails to make it easy for visitors and hunters to identify mole-bear dens. This also aided the water-deer, the favorite prey of mole-bear. In addition to making them fast swimmers, the stiff hairs shrouding their hooves made them sensitive to vibrations in the ground, allowing them to sense even the best-concealed mole-bears. Their ability to sense vibrations in the ground made them notoriously difficult to hunt unless there was running water nearby to mask the fidgeting of a hunter. Most hunting supply shops near Plei’s forests would carry vibration generators to make hunting water-deer away from rivers feasible. However, most of the hunters in Glenbee would agree that the cheaper vibration generators will actually scare away all nearby water-deer rather than put them at ease.

“I thought she said people have seen the mole-bears themselves,” said Lauren.

“Well, Sovanna, your mom, is known to exaggerate things on occasion,” said her father, he thought for a second, “don’t tell her I told you that.”

“I won’t, dad,” said Lauren.

“So how do you want your water-deer tonight?” asked her father, “there won’t be enough sunlight for solar cooking, unfortunately.”

Lauren thought for a moment about asking for grilled venison but decided against it because she didn’t want to chance smelling charred meat.

“How about a stew?” proposed Lauren.

“Sure!” said Wekesa, “as long as you don’t mind waiting the extra time for dinner.” He turned off the main road and into a clearing. “We haven’t had stew in a long time,” reminisced her father.

The two Kims disembarked from their truck. The father took two rifles from the back of the truck, giving one to the daughter. He walked up to a map of the forest split into different colored areas.

“Perfect, our usual hunting spot is open.” Wekesa attached a padlock to a hoop corresponding to an area next to the river just under a sign that read, “Tag out your hunting area. Remember to take your locks before leaving!”

“Here, you’re old enough for these now,” he said, putting a bag of bullets in her hand.

Lauren took only two of the bullets and loaded them into her gun. It didn’t make sense to load more since she would only have enough time to fire one more round before all of the animals would have scattered at the sound of the first bullet. Lauren double checked that the safety was engaged. Lauren followed her father as the two of them hiked through the forest.

Dead leaves crunched underfoot while birds sang in the trees overhead. Eventually Lauren became aware of the sound of rushing water and could make out the slightly off colors of the area’s makeshift hunting hideout. It was made out of spare lumber and painted tarp and even lacked a wall on the side adjacent to the trail but it was more than enough to fool the nearsighted water deer that came to drink on the other side of the river.

“Mind the hole,” said Wekesa pointing at the slight depression in the carpet of leaves as they both approached the hideout. “Now we wait,” he said, taking a seat on a log stool.

This was always Lauren’s least favorite part about hunting although historically it was because it bored her. This time boredom wasn’t the primary feeling. Even though she wanted to have nothing to do with it, Lauren gripped her rifle tightly as it would kill anyone if it so much as left her sight. As she did so, Lauren felt uncomfortable knowing that her finger was so close to the trigger of her gun that it made the grip of even her childhood rifle feel awkward and unfamiliar. Her experiences on Jezebel made her realize how trivial it could be to take someone’s life, even getting dressed in the morning was a more complex process. Lauren took a deep breath after realizing that her gun was rattling in her grip. She was starting to wish she had stayed home.

“Only an hour or two more,” said her father as if in an effort to provide some comfort. As he said that, several water-deer bounded past them on the trail, only meters away from the hideout and from Lauren and Wekesa. “Or maybe not,” he said, “honestly, I don’t know what that means—”

A roar echoed through the forest from upstream.

“Mole-bear!” cried Wekesa jumping to his feet, “quickly! We need to get up a tree, there’s one with climbing pegs right across the trail—”

With his fourth step, his foot plunged into the depression of leaves up to his knee. Lauren snapped to, standing with her father to her right and training her sights up the trail. She caught a bush rustling in time to see a mole-bear burst through before stopping in its tracks. It was probably disappointed to see that its quarry had gotten away but now had to contend with two invaders to its territory. It trotted around Lauren in a wide circle, several meters in radius but well within pouncing distance. Lauren kept her crosshairs over the animal’s head which was her only guaranteed way to immobilize it. She would have to wait for the pause that comes before the mole-bear’s pounce. Suddenly her scope went dark. Panicked that she couldn’t see the attacking beast, her trigger finger curled automatically.

“Lauren no!” it was her father.

Lauren realized that the bear had circled her enough to put her father between it and herself. Lauren’s heart sank and her mind raced in a moment of introspection infinitely worse than anything she had experienced in the dark hall on Jezebel, in large part because she had just killed her father but also because she realized that she had just failed her second test, that she hadn’t, and perhaps, couldn’t learn from her mistakes.

Lauren again saw the forest and the mole-bear, now readying to pounce, through her scope. But still there was no sound of a gunshot. Lauren thought she had blocked out her senses but then heard a rustling and grunting which could only be her father crawling through the leaves. She moved her index finger around and felt the exterior of the trigger guard and then realized that she had unconsciously prepared for a situation like this by placing her hand lower down the handle of her gun so that her finger wasn’t anywhere near the trigger. She adjusted her grip and found that the rifle felt normal in her hands again just in time for her to ready and fire once, sending a bullet through the mole-bear’s skull. It fell forwards, lifeless.

Lauren felt a compulsion to fire again, mostly born out of a desire to rid her gun of bullets. Instead she took a breath and ejected the round, letting it fall onto the leafy floor. Her heart was pounding in her ears. Even though the rifle was now devoid of bullets, Lauren put the safety on before helping her father to his feet.

“Well then,” said her father as he dusted himself off, “I thought you were going to kill me there for a second.”

“There was a moment where I thought I did,” said Lauren, tossing her gun to the side and hugging her father tightly.

“There, there. You’re alright now. I’m alright too,” he said. He put his hands on her shoulders. “You’re still shaking,” he said, “why don’t you climb that tree and let the scenery calm you down while I collect our dinner? Don’t worry about me, nothing in this forest is going to bother us after that gunshot.”

Lauren nodded and went over to the safety tree, letting her muscle memory carry her to the top platform where she could see over the forest. The sight of a sea of trees drew a long sigh from her and made her lose track of time. She wondered if this experience meant that she had become a less reckless person. What made her wonder was the fact that she hadn’t been aware of the change and that what made her pass the test was something she did without realizing. She didn’t know if she could rely upon it but Jethro did say big events like the one on Jezebel change people on a level deeper than conscious habits. Lauren found herself looking at the top of an ancient building poking through the canopy. She wasn’t sure how long she had been staring at the weathered tower. However, she felt a longing to get back to work fueled by a vague, fresh sense of excitement that she got from looking at the ancient structure. Lauren pulled out her phone to begin outlining an independent mission proposal to explore Plei. She wondered if she would be able to make it far enough in her work as an Archival Officer to get the chance to explore the ruins of her home planet formally. For now she was cautiously optimistic.

End of book 1