Chapter 9 #4
That was how she found herself stepping down from the hover, onto the landing platform around the guest parking of the academy.
Like the market, parking was done by hanging the hovers off the side of the tree, turning them ninety degrees so that the bottom latched to the tree.
Inside the hover, the seats would shift, adjusting for the new angle.
The climb down was awkward for her, as a human, but her driver helped her down.
She stepped off onto the wood and stone platform, walking quickly to the railing so she could look out over the academy.
Her idea of academia was either old fashioned architecture, prestige, and dry seriousness or cheap, ill aged, and struggling to get by.
Calvitorum’s academy was neither of those things.
Instead, it was a cross between a literal jungle gym, a complicated, upscale treehouse village spanning several, skyscraper sized trees, and every university campus ever.
The academy was multiple buildings built at multiple levels around multiple different trees.
Structures were scattered throughout the canopy top, in-canopy, sub-canopy, trunks, and even rooms built at the level of the roots.
Though, that far down, the buildings had to be built watertight.
Already, thanks to the near constant rain, there was flooding below.
Though the lights glowing in the windows beneath the water told Holly that people were still working within.
Steady, wooden bridges, covered by colorful cloth canvas tarps to keep them dry, stretched between the trees at various levels.
In some places, she could see that the paths connecting the trees weren’t paths at all but bars, rings, or separated bridges to leap between.
Straight out of an obstacle course. Those paths were also covered and the domini weren’t shy about taking them.
Holly wasn’t sure if they were there for fun, for exercise, or for actual training.
The domini that took those paths were laughing, encouraging each other, cursing when they messed up and fell into a net strung below that they then had to climb from as their friends mocked them.
The normal paths were still highly populated.
People were rushing about, talking into their combots, searching through tablets, talking to each other in various levels of heated discussion.
It was energetic and interesting and reminded her of walking across a college campus and seeing the jocks throwing a ball or frisbee, nerds walking around with their noses in books, and people just rushing to get to their next class.
“Honored Vora Vakara,” her driver/bodyguard called to her gently. “The archives you wished to see are this way. I will lead you.”
Holly nodded. “Sure. Thanks.”
He grunted softly, which she knew wasn’t rude to the domini, before turning and walking her towards one of the many paths.
He chose the normal ones, unsurprisingly.
No amount of girl power or strong independent woman attitude could convince her that she was capable of navigating the other ones even if it weren’t raining.
Not that she had to worry about being wet.
She was still undoubtedly outside, but everything was covered and dry.
The students – or workers, she wasn’t sure?
- stared at her as she passed, but she was long used to that by now.
She knew if there was an alien walking around on her planet, she’d be fascinated too, so she couldn’t blame them even if it was slightly uncomfortable.
Admittedly, the domini already knew that other aliens existed – and Holly had seen a few strange species out in the city sometimes – but humans were different. Completely unknown, undiscovered, heroes to their leader, and apparently capable of interbreeding.
She was a mega star, in short.
Holly ignored them as her bodyguard led her two trees away then down towards the lower levels. She had to step onto a lift that lowered her into a building as there was no entrance outside currently usable because it was under the rising waterline.
Her destination was the archives. She had asked for a library, but they didn’t have one on account of written records not being a thing for a couple centuries.
Instead, the academy had the archives. A building that was just one part of a massive, interconnected source of knowledge throughout the entirety of Turv.
Like the internet, but with far fewer funny cats and cute dogs and way more dry, academic texts – all of it for free.
She was still expecting a library type atmosphere, but she should have known better.
The archives were deep in a reinforced basement structure, protected and supported by the root system of the trees it was built around.
The lift lowered her into a chamber about two stories high, bright and beautiful with white walls decorated by gently pulsing blue strips of light that ran across in a design reminiscent of a motherboard.
In the center of a room, right at the base of the lift, there was what was quite clearly a welcome desk being manned by a female who had a headset on with a holo display over her eyes.
She was moving quickly around, working off multiple terminals in front of her at once.
There weren’t bookshelves. Instead, there were little pods hanging from the walls.
They moved as someone called an empty one down to climb inside or others ordered theirs down so they could step out.
It came with a door that she imagined was soundproof since she could see some people moving their lips and others bobbing their heads but the only thing she heard was the gentle, unfamiliar drumbeats of music overhead.
“I just get in one of the pods?” She asked, looking back at her bodyguard.
Before he could answer, a gasp followed by a soft clatter jerked her eyes back forward to the female manning the welcome desk. The clatter was her dropping her hologoggles onto her desk as she got to her feet, staring with a big smile at Holly.
“Great ancestors! One of the humans!” She gasped, giddy. “No way. This is so great. Oh! No one is going to actually believe this! Hello. Nice to meet you!”
Holly chuckled, stepping forward. “Hi. Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt your work.”
“Hm? Oh, this. Psh! Nothing. My job is to help. I just do this to pass the time because no one ever actually needs archive pods explained to them. This stuff is taught in primary education.”
Holly grinned nervously. “Funny you should mention that because I actually kind of need archive pods explained to me.”
Her three, red eyes widened in horror. “Oh! Honored Vora Vakara! Forgive me. That was so short sighted of me. Please, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”
“It’s fine. Can you just explain to me how it works?”
“Of course! Come along. It’s very simple. Do you have your combot?”
“Yes.” Holly patted her hip pouch as the female came around her desk, gesturing her to follow her to one of the walls.
“Great. You’ll need it to log in. No access without one since there’s a neural imprint machine in each pod to help with studying. The system has to keep track of how much you imprint since you can’t go over a certain amount in a given time without medical supervision.”
The neural imprints were how Holly had learned to speak the domini language.
It had been a huge machine in the medical center that literally forced the knowledge of the language – both spoken and written – directly into her brain.
A full language dump was a lot of information, so it was only done at the medical center, but smaller imprints could be done off smaller machines without supervision.
The knowledge was immediately available and usable, but you had to review it within three days because, without actually going over the imprint with your own deliberate, conscious thought, the information would fade away.
When Holly had gotten the imprint, she had been given a short story she had to read, out loud, that had been designed to go over all the most common words and grammar structures necessary for effective communication.
Instant understanding, a bit of studying afterwards, then – boom! – the knowledge was yours. It was impressive and seemed practically magical to Holly.
She paid careful attention as the domini female showed her how to use the main terminal to call down an empty pod, then how to plug her combot into it to log in and how to work the holo display as well as the mini neural imprint machine. The door was indeed soundproof.
“I will wait for you here, honored Vora Vakara,” her bodyguard said, stationing himself below.
Holly shook her head. “No, it’s okay. I’m probably going to be here a while.”
“I do not mind standing.”
“Really, I’m fine. I’m surrounded by people in the academy. I’ll comm you when I’m ready to go back, all right?”
The guard saluted her. “As you wish, honored Vora Vakara. I will be nearby.”
Holly nodded and watched him go before she turned and sat in the surprisingly comfortable, rounded seat inside the pod, shut the door, and slid her combot into place. Immediately, the computer booted up.
Her pod didn’t move – and wouldn’t until they needed to adjust to bring down a different one to either let someone in or out – so she remained on the ground floor as she hesitated with her fingers over the terminal.
Honestly, she had just been interested in seeing where Romival was working. She hadn’t really had a thought in her head about what she wanted to look up. She just knew that universities had libraries so maybe the academy would have one too and she had been directed here.
Though, now that she was here…