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Here's the prologue, and the index page!
I have no idea if I'm going to update on a schedule; signs point to no. Sorry about that!
Assuming good faith bites me in the ass all the time. Took me a lifetime to realize that was the problem.
I'm avoiding physical descriptions in the actual text because I am led to understand that readers have difficulty connecting with alien main characters. Regardless, if you're wondering, koranos are not actually humans, but they are human-equivalent: furry humanoid aliens who resemble archaic humans and might be mistaken for large, fuzzy Homo habilis. You know, space gorillas.
Paquos resemble rubber-hose cartoon characters. They're bipedally humanoid, shortish (around 4 feet), ambiguously mammalian, red-green colorblind, dark-furred, and have high-contrast light markings on their faces. They also have highly mobile, expressive ears.
Both species are native to Feavah.
---
Dad's experiments didn't have many outliers like the Palbert boy. The pilot trials for the implants ended by the next school cycle, and the experimental groups joined the public schools.
Technically, so did the control groups. Though the experiment was over and unblinded, it wasn't necessary to tell nonparticipants who was in which group—but it was easy enough to figure it out by the classes the teachers placed them in. The control participants, the ones without the implants, were disruptive, unfocused, unable to consistently do school work, antisocial, and messy—overall, leaning toward delinquency.
Maybe his being in the experimental group was why it was hard to reconcile the amiable-looking Palbert boy with the delinquents we saw in Civic Hygiene videos: hoodlums who threw cigar butts on the ground, stole packets of settling dust from the store, and scribbled rude things on bathroom walls and diner booths. Maybe he would have been more like them if he didn't have an implant.
Nielli Brones wasn't part of Dad's trial, being a korano, but that was pretty much all I knew about her until one day when she suddenly became relevant by sitting in my recess Quiet Spot.
Recess was another one of those things I did wrong, but how was I supposed to play with others when we had to spend so many hours trying to hold our attention on boring things? How did the other kids not need to relax their brains with a nice walk or a few minutes sitting in a copse, a Quiet Spot, staring at the sky panels or examining blades of grass while they contemplated the universe?
Nielli was not examining grass. She was fiddling with … something. Something small and shiny that cast a flicker of colorful light across her face.
( It beeped. )
I have no idea if I'm going to update on a schedule; signs point to no. Sorry about that!
Assuming good faith bites me in the ass all the time. Took me a lifetime to realize that was the problem.
I'm avoiding physical descriptions in the actual text because I am led to understand that readers have difficulty connecting with alien main characters. Regardless, if you're wondering, koranos are not actually humans, but they are human-equivalent: furry humanoid aliens who resemble archaic humans and might be mistaken for large, fuzzy Homo habilis. You know, space gorillas.
Paquos resemble rubber-hose cartoon characters. They're bipedally humanoid, shortish (around 4 feet), ambiguously mammalian, red-green colorblind, dark-furred, and have high-contrast light markings on their faces. They also have highly mobile, expressive ears.
Both species are native to Feavah.
---
Dad's experiments didn't have many outliers like the Palbert boy. The pilot trials for the implants ended by the next school cycle, and the experimental groups joined the public schools.
Technically, so did the control groups. Though the experiment was over and unblinded, it wasn't necessary to tell nonparticipants who was in which group—but it was easy enough to figure it out by the classes the teachers placed them in. The control participants, the ones without the implants, were disruptive, unfocused, unable to consistently do school work, antisocial, and messy—overall, leaning toward delinquency.
Maybe his being in the experimental group was why it was hard to reconcile the amiable-looking Palbert boy with the delinquents we saw in Civic Hygiene videos: hoodlums who threw cigar butts on the ground, stole packets of settling dust from the store, and scribbled rude things on bathroom walls and diner booths. Maybe he would have been more like them if he didn't have an implant.
Nielli Brones wasn't part of Dad's trial, being a korano, but that was pretty much all I knew about her until one day when she suddenly became relevant by sitting in my recess Quiet Spot.
Recess was another one of those things I did wrong, but how was I supposed to play with others when we had to spend so many hours trying to hold our attention on boring things? How did the other kids not need to relax their brains with a nice walk or a few minutes sitting in a copse, a Quiet Spot, staring at the sky panels or examining blades of grass while they contemplated the universe?
Nielli was not examining grass. She was fiddling with … something. Something small and shiny that cast a flicker of colorful light across her face.
( It beeped. )
