A Science Fantasy Adventure from The Other Worlds
Our story begins in Odisiris, a planet within the Andromeda Galaxy and home to a race of super-humans known as Citizens…
My name is Skelos Dorm. I have an aptitude for neuroscience. The Establishment is impressed with my work in neurorobotics. Anything to do with droids and cyborgs is always welcome.
However, they do not have the same enthusiasm when it comes to understanding the Citizen psyche—reading thoughts, interpreting minds. I understand their caution. Many Citizens have plenty to hide. They do not want their indiscretions made known to anyone but their closest allies—myself included.
I do not want you to see my thoughts. I do not want you to know what I truly am, what I am capable of…
Chapter 1
The planet of Odisiris lies in the Andromeda Galaxy. It is home to a superhuman race known as Citizens…
Skelos Dorm’s Storeswere the envy of all the scientists in the City of Pareus. Constructed of cylindrical glass and steel, the fifty-storey, scientific research facility was devoted to the exploration and acquisition of Intelligent Systems. The windows were masked. You could see out, but you seldom saw in.
He had a fleet of staff to do his bidding. There were too many names to remember. Students, field researchers, professors, doctors, engineers, and scientific board members were in frequent attendance. He had one floor for specimens alone and a whole floor devoted to his work in neurorobotics.
He worked in the hub on the ground floor. The hub was his personal laboratory: his nervous system. And he was the brains. Each piece of research generated in the hub gravitated up. He had fashioned a section into his secondary living quarters. After all, he spent more time in the Stores than he did anywhere else. It was the place where he felt most at home, squeezed into his black lab coat and surgical gloves.
He swiped at the holograms that hovered above the raised podium.
His new, sixteen-year-old, apprentice watched him from a distance.
‘May I have a look?’ said the apprentice. He crept up to the platform, flicking his fringe out of his eyes.
Every year, he acquired one eager apprentice to work alongside him, to observe, to learn, to strive, and to emulate his great work, though none had ever achieved such a feat. Unfortunately, this apprentice was not of his choosing and was more tiresome than eager.
In fact, Skelos thought him rather stolid for a First Status Citizen. He seemed to care more about his looks and the females on his roster than he did about science, but the boy’s father was a prominent figure in the Parliamentary Elite, so Skelos had no choice in the matter.
‘No, you may not.’ He tried to recall the boy’s name. Imbecile sprung to mind. No that’s not it. ‘And please do me the courtesy of addressing me by my formal title.’
‘Sorry Dr Skelos.’ The young apprentice gulped. ‘I’m eager to learn.’
‘You’re not as eager to learn as I was when I was your age. What do you do when you leave here?’
‘Urm…er…’
Skelos rolled his eyes. He knew how he spent his time at sixteen years of age, and it wasn’t chasing after girls.
Skelos’s parents had encouraged him to enter the family energy business. Dorm Presteria Energy had been in his family for generations. He saw little point in working hard in a vocation he had no interest in and little understanding. The burden of this obligation had shifted to his older brother who was glad to take up the mantle.
He fell into his current profession when he was given the opportunity to work as an apprentice in the Pareusians’s Pharmaceutical Stores. He found mixing toxic liquids together therapeutic and the clinical feel of the labs exhilarating. He remembered the rush he felt when he shrugged in and out of his tailor-made lab coat. He soon decided that he wanted to be a scientist, not just any scientist, the most renowned scientist in the world.
While he embodied science, his new apprentice treated it as if it were a punishment. Well, I will see him punished.
‘Consult my notes.’
‘That can’t take very long. I seldom see you take any.’ Skelos dragged a hologram of a brain in front of the Citizen youth. ‘Dissect it.’
The apprentice prodded at the image as if it were a real brain. He then paused mid-prodding to gawp at a female research assistant who had wandered into their midst. Her hair cascaded down her back like a rapidly flowing river, and her eyelashes were decorated with ice crystals. The boy’s eyes bulged with delight, and he twisted his neck, pursuing her in his mind.
Skelos considered slapping the boy around the head to garner his attention and then remembered who his father was. He made a fist of his slapping hand and watched the boy tweak apart the holographic brain segment by segment. The apprentice’s name then came to him: Imbrecas.
‘Well tell me what you’re looking at, Imbrecas.’ There was nothing to stop him having two apprentices, he supposed. A second apprentice on alternate days of the week will alleviate this torture. I will speak to the boy’s father tomorrow. See if we might come to another arrangement that is more to my advantage and less to his.
‘The-the left temporal lobe,’ said Imbrecas, his hand shaking. ‘Erm…the…Occ-occipital Lobe.’
Skelos sighed. His mind ventured to more critical matters. His years of measured research taunted him. By all accounts, they were non-productive. It was not his fault, or the fault of his assistants. It was The Establishment. They were to blame for his lack of progress. He could have Stores half the size of Pareus and a thousand discoveries and inventions to his name, but few would ever make it into Odisirian society, few would ever be recognised, rewarded or acknowledged, not without the backing of The Establishment, the three most powerful orders in Odisiris: The Parliamentary Elite, The P.D.P.C: Planetary Data Protection Committee, and the P.S.R.F.D: Pareus Scientific Research and Funding Division.
Skelos had an aptitude for neuroscience. The Establishment was impressed with his work in neurorobotics. Anything to do with droids and cyborgs was always welcome. However, they did not have the same enthusiasm when it came to understanding the Citizen psyche, reading thoughts, interpreting minds.
He understood their caution. Many Citizens had plenty to hide. They did not want their indiscretions made known to anyone but their closest allies.
Skelos grew weary of the protocol and rules regarding the research conducted within his Stores. His so-called Mind Work was done in the evening or at night when most of his team had gone home. There were ways in which he could take his Mind Work to another level. He was wasting his efforts experimenting on Unmarked Ones[1] and rodents. Their genetic make-up was different, very different to Citizens. Practically alien.
[1] Unmarked Ones – non-Citizens