Chapter 4
?rim
He found himself standing at the front of the classroom with twelve pairs of bright eyes trained on him.
Even his first year as a lab tech at the Imperial Institute of Sciences hadn’t felt so overwhelming.
Now, he was overdressed in one of his starchy black robes while the younglings waited for him to speak.
He suspected they were sizing him up just as much as he was them.
He tried to remember all the different species in Laurus.
The giradey were easy to recognize with their bright feathers.
He’d met several kyrot already. Wings and fur.
The name of the slippery, spotted-skin younglings eluded him.
And then there was a human. But not a youngling.
No, this human appeared to be at maturity.
It didn’t matter. He was staring, and the human was obviously growing uncomfortable since she refused to meet his eyes. He was here to teach, not gawk.
“Alright then. I am ?rim o’ Alae. I’ll be teaching you for the foreseeable future.
You can call me Educator ?rim.” He waited to see the response to his introduction and then adjusted the fit on his right eyestone slightly.
Maybe he shouldn’t have used his title, but he had earned it.
Seven years in the lab at the bottom of the mountain.
“What are you?” asked one of the giradey fledglings.
“He’s obviously a rock,” a different youngling shot back.
“Rocks don’t talk! You swamp dweller!”
“Urtazi don’t even live in swamps. Idiot.”
Well, now he knew the name of the fourth species, even if it was at the cost of an argument in the middle of his classroom.
The purple-spotted urtazi youngling rose and moved toward the worktable where the two giradey sat.
?rim felt the familiar anxiety crushing his chest as he lost control of the class within two standard minutes of starting.
There wasn’t even time to correct them that he was not, in fact, a rock, but rather a crystalline silicate being.
He thought all his students were going to riot when there was a banging in the back of the room.
The human female had stood up and hit her hands together three times hard.
As if lightning struck, the younglings all turned to the human in the back of the room.
“Would you like to try again?” she asked with a bright voice.
But ?rim wasn’t looking at her face or even at the reactions from the younglings.
He was looking at the faint red pulse at her throat emanating from a silver chip.
A voicelock. He’d never seen one in person.
What was a voicelocked human doing here in Laurus, let alone in his classroom?
His anxiety was replaced with insatiable curiosity.
It took all his self-control to prevent himself from rushing to the back of the classroom to barrage her with questions she probably wouldn’t be able to answer anyway.
He was staring at her. He knew he was staring.
Everyone certainly knew he was staring. He just couldn’t believe his incredible luck.
A voicelock. A genuine voicelock. The truest meld of bioengineering anyone had ever invented.
They were also highly dangerous and highly illegal.
?rim tamped down his exuberance, disturbed by how quickly his excitement had overridden basic decency.
There was nothing lucky about a voicelock.
He forced his attention back to the younglings who had quieted and slunk back to their respective seats after the interruption. The human sat back in her seat at the far reach of the classroom, and ?rim tried to piece his thoughts back together.
“Right. Well, let’s compose ourselves, please.
I am not a rock. I am teosian, a silicate, crystalline lifeform.
” ?rim drew attention back to himself at the front of the room.
“We’re all here to learn after all. I expect we can manage mutual respect.
” He touched the holoscreen at the front of the room, activating the learning engine.
It illuminated the room with an offblue light.
“I’ve introduced myself, so please share your names with me now.
” He tapped his thumb nodes together, trying to quell the discomfort he felt about how poorly everything had started on his first day in the schoolhouse.
But it was all mired in the deep fascination he had with the voicelocked human at the back of the room.
Unbidden, one of the urtazi spawn stood first, puffing his throats to illuminate the pale orange spots. In the mix of introductions, ?rim suspected he would never remember all their names, but he’d work around that. He was only interested in one name.
“Do you have a name?” he asked the human female. Surely, even a voicelock would allow her to state a version of her name if it allowed her to form complete sentences otherwise. She shook her head and made a gesture he didn’t recognize.
“Hey! We all shared our names. What’s your name?” one of the urtazi shouted from the front of the room. Her face changed to a horrible dark shade, and ?rim worried he might need to call for medical treatment.
Eventually, her lips moved around the shape of a word, but ?rim’s eyesight in daylight was lackluster at best. In the dark he might have been able to decipher her singular name word. “Can you repeat that a bit louder?” he asked.
Water fell from her eyes. Was that normal? He really knew far less about humans than he realized. Finally, she stood and faced him.
“Hi, my name is Cassie. How can I be of assistance?” Her sparkling voice was entirely incongruous with the shaking of her body.
?rim was about to respond that she didn’t need to help him at all and that he was concerned she might be in distress, but before he had a chance to respond, she grabbed her bag and fled the schoolhouse.
“What a broken egg.” One of the giradey whistled.
“Humans are straaange,” a different giradey confirmed in elongated singsong.
“Healer Eleri isn’t weird like that,” a kyrot said. “She’s human, right?”
The question seemed directed at him, but ?rim was distracted by the human who had vanished after sharing her name.
“Hey, Mister Educator, is Healer Eleri human?” The kyrot asked again.
“What? Oh, Healer Eleri? Yes, she is.”
“See, I told you she was human.” The kyrot screeched at her companions.
?rim realized that both for himself and the younglings, he had no chance of salvaging the lesson.
In fact, the lesson hadn’t even started.
He hadn’t even gotten past introductions, and already things were spinning so far off the intended axis.
His energy core crackled with electricity as he clapped a hand down on his desk.
“This conversation is not useful or relevant. We are here to discuss the curriculum for our lessons.” The room fell silent.
It was a welcome sign. “Thank you. Now, where were we? Right, I have sent a hololink to each of your datapads with an aptitude test. This will help me assess the general skill level.”
Several of the students groaned or made pained expressions.
“Seriously?” Someone called out.
“Yes, very seriously. You haven’t had an educator here in almost five standard months. It’s important for us to enter the curriculum at the right level. Once you’re finished, you’re dismissed for the rest of the afternoon.”
Datapads pinged as the upload completed. ?rim sat at his desk while the students completed their assessments and then packed up for the day.
Alone in the classroom, his mind was occupied elsewhere. A genuine voicelock. Earth-made, no doubt. It was the only place where the craftsmanship was still practiced with any regularity. He considered what he would have to do to convince the human to let him examine it.