Cousin Thalia’s crèche followed the Jorian style of architecture. It tended towards white buildings constructed with brick or artificial stone, no more than a few storeys above the ground. Walls were partially rounded and met in curved corners, rather than flat surfaces joined together by ninety-degree angles. Where ground space was at a premium, Jorians built underground instead of upwards.

  The crèche had two main buildings with smaller ones scattered around them. The largest was for communal activities, the second-largest for storage and the smallest were the residences. The younger children slept in groups of three or four, but as they grew older they moved into single dwellings like the adults. There were no visible walls or fences encircling the grounds, but behind the scenes was a different story. Hidden technology helped the adults keep the children safe.

  Limit and the other children were outside, laughing and chasing each other. They were playing some kind of game without clear rules or objectives, leaving the watchful adults equally amused and baffled. The weather control authority had delivered clear blue skies with hardly any clouds while Joria’s sun shone bright yellow overhead, warming Lmiit’s skin pleasantly. Green plants and colourful flowers covered most of the grounds and winding paths formed from small, grey-and-white pebbles connected the buildings.

  A woman exited the main building and paused just outside the doors. She was dressed in loose, airy clothing and the gentle breeze stirred her long, white hair. Her pale, ice-blue eyes observed each of the children closely. When her gaze landed on Limit it lingered a little longer than the others. A thoughtful look crossed her face, tinged with perhaps a hint of worry.

  Then a large, fluffy white cat prowled over to her, purring as it rubbed firmly against her lower legs. Even a keen observer would have to be forgiven for not noticing the cat until then. Despite the openness of the grounds and the bright sun above, it wasn’t immediately clear where exactly the cat had come from.

  By the time Limit or anyone else noticed her, the woman’s face showed only the kind smile she was known and loved for.

  “Cousin Thalia!” Limit shouted happily.

  The young boy immediately stopped what he was doing and ran towards her. He wasn’t alone: the other young children were quick to surround her in an excited cluster. Even the older adults smiled and nodded in greeting at the crèche leader’s arrival.

  As the first to spot her, Limit felt like he deserved her full attention. Sadly all the other children felt the same way and their excited voices drowned him out.

  The solution, of course, was clearly to shout louder.

  The noise level rose dramatically as the children clamoured for Thalia’s attention. Then Limit started to hear others shouting a few words.

  “Do the trick!”

  Limit grinned and joined in. Soon all the children were chanting:

  “Do the trick! Do the trick!”

  With an indulgent smile, Thalia raised a hand.

  “Quiet please,” she said.

  And it was.

  Limit laughed but couldn't hear himself. Around him, children giggled and clapped soundlessly. One girl's wide, open mouth and red face made Limit try to laugh even harder. Despite the children's best efforts all that could be heard was the blowing wind and distant call of birds.

  “Settle down please everyone,” Thalia said into the silence. Only her voice could be heard when she did the trick.

  The children slowly calmed down. When Thalia could see they were ready she nodded. Then, all of a sudden, Limit could hear his own breathing again. It was funny but he hardly ever noticed the sound of his breath until right after Thalia stopped her trick.

  The white-haired woman still had her hand raised. She pointed a single finger towards the sky.

  “The ornith will arrive soon. Who will find it first?”

  Limit quickly turned and eagerly searched the sky with the other children. But it was Joachilla who spoke first, as usual.

  “There it is!” she called out.

  Limit followed where she pointed but couldn’t see anything.

  “Where?” he asked. “I don’t see anything. You’re making it up!”

  “No I’m not,” she replied. “I just have special eyes. It’s not my fault you don’t!”

  She was right. When it came to her unique orange-and-black eyes no one except some of the adults could see what she could.

  Limit felt disappointed. Why couldn’t he have special eyes too?

  Then he felt something rub against his legs and looked down. Cousin Thalia’s fluffy white cat was bumping him gently with her head. He squatted down to pet her and felt the cat’s purs vibrate against his hand.

  “Can you see it, Cleo?” the boy asked. The cat just meowed in response.

  Limit felt a light touch on his shoulder.

  “All of us are special in different ways, Limit. One day you'll have the Skills to be special in any way you want to be.”

  Limit looked up and basked in the warmth of Cousin Thalia's smile. He didn't know how she always said the right thing.

  Maybe that's just what made her special.

  “I see it too!” one of the other cousins called out.

  Limit returned his eyes upwards. It wasn’t long until he too finally spotted the small dot against the blue sky.

  The spot quickly grew larger, until it looked like a small bird. But if it was a bird, it flew faster than any real one Limit had seen. Then he started to hear the sound of the wings. Soft at first, but increasing in volume as fast as the ‘bird’ grew in size.

  “Gather close everyone,” Cousin Thalia instructed the children. She and the other adults worked together to herd them into a cluster.

  By the time the ornith slowed to begin circling overhead, Limit and the others were ready and waiting for it to land. He looked at the large, oddly bird-like vehicle and admired its silvery, flexible wings and smooth, metallic curves. The body of the vehicle was shaped like a long tube big enough to hold several passengers while the front where the pilot sat resembled a stubby beak.

  “I’m going to fly one,” Limit stated with the certainty of a young child. “I’m going to be the best ornith pilot on Joria!”

  “Of course, Limit,” Thalia encouraged him seriously. “You will become anyone you want to.”

  Limit nodded with determination. When he grew up he wanted to fly!

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  The ornith settled down to land a safe distance away from the group. As it drew closer to the ground the wings stopped flapping, but somehow the large machine didn’t fall. Then Limit felt a strange sensation, like a gentle pressure from something he couldn’t see that kept him from moving towards the landing area.

  It was the same feeling he got if he tried to walk too far from the crèche. One time one of the youngest cousins had slipped away from Cousin Bravery. No one knew where he thought he was going. Eventually, the young boy had come to a stop on his own, pushing uselessly against nothing at all, like a fly caught in a web. There he'd remained, stuck and yelling all the while until Bravery slowly wandered over to retrieve him.

  Limit and Joachilla had laughed for what felt like hours afterwards.

  Four slim, metallic legs extended downwards. They looked far too thin to support something so large. They barely seemed to touch the grass, hardly disturbing a single blade. With a smooth, fluid motion the silvery wings folded up and over the ornith’s hull.

  Only then did the feeling of pressure stop, allowing Limit and the others to move toward the ornith.

  With Cousin Thalia in the lead, they drew closer. Limit watched as part of the hull rippled open to reveal a man standing in the opening. Flat, oval discs extracted themselves out of the hull and floated down, keeping even gaps between them. When they stopped, they’d formed a short staircase which reached from the ground to the ornith’s entryway.

  Limit examined the ovals curiously, but could see nothing between the gaps to explain how they stayed up. They just hovered without support, like his toy ves in the activity room. And when the man stepped to walk down the floating stairs, they held up under his weight without a hint of movement.

  “Thank you for coming.” Thalia extended both hands out flat, palm upwards while Limit and the others stopped behind her. Although he wanted to run up and examine the ornith’s floating stairs more closely, he knew when it was time to behave. “I hope your journey was both safe and pleasant.”

  “It was, thank you,” the man replied as he stopped in front of her. He placed two hands palm down over hers, just barely close enough to avoid touching.

  Then his second, mechanical-looking pair of arms moved his other hands, palm upwards, underneath.

  Limit was a little curious about what it would be like to have four hands and arms. But he'd already seen other polyhumans with extra limbs from time to time, so he turned back to look at the more interesting floating stairs.

  After a few more pleasantries Cousin Thalia returned her attention to the gathered children while the pilot went back inside his ornith.

  “Very well, children, follow me,” she told them. “One at a time, please. Our trip to the animal nursery awaits.”

  Then Thalia turned and followed the man up the stairs into the waiting vehicle.

  “You think we’ll see any fornlets?” Joachilla asked. She’d joined Limit to wait their turn to climb the stairs together.

  “I hope so,” Limit answered with an eager smile. “Maybe we'll even bring one back with us!”

  *** *** ***

  The extra-dimensional continuity known as The Ouroboros existed . . . elsewhere. Elsewhen. Beyond the understanding of most polyhumans.

  At least, the living ones.

  Even after living . . . Dying? . . . Unliving?

  B@llyd nearly lost himself in aimless musings. Fortunately, the memic matrix he’d subsumed into triggered fail-safes which refocused his scattered thoughts on the present.

  “Jeez, they weren’t kidding,” B@llyd whistled out loud. Which, without real lips was just one more oddity stacked up on too many to count. “Look at you, old man! Couple thousand years as a bodiless, extra-dimensional whatever and you’ve become a doddering old fool! Get it together!”

  For good measure, B@llyd lifted a metallic arm and slapped himself across the cheek. Or at least he tried to. Instead, since he hadn’t properly defined the limits of the memic he now inhabited, his vaguely shaped ‘hand’ merely merged into his unrefined ‘face’ like two pieces of semi-fluid putty.

  “That’s not right,” B@llyd muttered and worked to extract himself . . . from himself. “Where’s the settings menu for this thing . . ?”

  A few hems, haws (and other sounds that were decidedly inhuman or vaguely disturbing) later, B@llyd’s new body had morphed to look mostly like a standard human male.

  A naked one.

  “Two hands, five fingers - forget those fools who say the thumb isn’t a finger! Ha! Eyelids, ears, tongue, nose . . . check! Toes and -” B@llyd’s cut himself off and looked down at an area which was still nothing more than an undefined, androgynous bump. “Work on that after I figure out clothes. There might be ladies watching!”

  B@llyd cackled at his own joke. His laughter warbled inhumanly as it sounded throughout the command centre, the frequency modulating wildly from high to low and back again.

  *** *** ***

  Rona’s first posting after JDF training academy wasn’t what she’d expected.

  Joria’s embassy to Wenrin was of critical importance to Joria’s interests and security. Wenrin was a core world within the interstellar powerhouse that was the Gorin Federation, and only two Nexus Hearts away from Joria. Although Joria was officially a member of the Sigmalus Collective, the planet was as dependent on Wenrin’s trade as they were wary of any potential Federation aggression.

  The embassy was a walled compound located in Wenrin’s capital. It was built in the Jorian style with white-bricked buildings and picturesque gardens and stood in stark contrast to the technologically advanced megalopolis which surrounded it. Massive towers of metal and glass soared skywards, some tall enough to pierce the clouds as if searching for the stars themselves. Millions of polyhumans thronged the streets and even the skies, with ground-based and airborne transports of all kinds.

  Rona stood in front of the embassy’s main building in her JDF power armour, doing her best impression of a statue. Her armour’s polychromatic shell reflected the sunlight with that metallic, too-bright sheen of high-grade metafluidics. A sleek-looking hypervelocity rifle was cradled at a precise angle in her arms, while the hilt of her monomolecular blade jutted out from behind her left shoulder.

  She looked just like the recruitment posters she'd seen as a child. She just hadn't thought how dreadfully dull it could be.

  “. . . you think about this . . . ‘crèche’ idea?”

  A pair of Federation delegates had just exited the embassy through the door beside her. Rona was already aware of their approach, of course. Synched with the embassy’s security via her cynth, she’d tracked their progress from the moment they’d left their conference room.

  The woman who’d just spoken was white-haired with pale skin and blue eyes. Rona couldn’t tell if she was a true native of Gorin or just had biomods to look like one, as was common in the Federation. She had silvery nesytech embedded in a fan-like pattern below her left eye and her expensive clothes made her look both refined and influential.

  “We’ll put it somewhere out of the way first,” her companion responded. “Find somewhere with high population density and a shortage of childcare.”

  This was a man with equally, if not more expensive-looking clothing. Shorter than the woman, he too had the appearance of a Gorinite. Almost everyone who came to the embassy did, Rona reflected to herself. Having the right look, whether naturally or through biomods, was likely a requirement for anyone who seriously pursued any role with influence within the Federation.

  The pair completely ignored Rona’s armoured figure as they moved away from the door. They walked down a short but wide decorative staircase, onto a path winding through the embassy’s perfectly manicured lawns. Trees lined the path, with holorecs of wildlife native to Joria chirping, swooping and hopping about in a simulacrum of their normal lives.

  Rona accessed the sensors concealed throughout the grounds with a command to her cynth. A screen superimposed itself over her vision. It allowed her to track the pair’s journey through the grounds, even after trees obscured her physical field of view.

  “I thought you might say that,” the woman said. They moved briskly along the path, towards the embassy's outer wall and the exit to the city beyond. “I prepped a brief with likely candidates for your perusal. Let me viz it to your cynth.”

  The woman raised her hand and made a small gesture towards the other man. The nesytech below her eye even glowed briefly.

  Neither theatrical cue was necessary to send information between cynths. Rona supposed she did it to show off a bit, but many polyhumans had similar quirks.

  “Good work,” the man nodded. “I already think . . .”

  By then they’d reached the end of the path where it met the wall and gatehouse. The gate was an elaborate metal construction reminiscent of some ancient pre-space castle. But it didn't open with an outward swing as one might expect. Instead, the entire thing dissolved into a liquid and flowed away into the walls before the delegates could reach them. Without missing a step the pair continued past the walls into the city proper. Once clear, the liquid metal flowed back in reverse and reformed the gate as if nothing had happened.

  Then Rona watched the two delegates lift off the ground and rocket into the sky. They joined the fast-moving air traffic en route to their next destination and disappeared from Rona’s view.

  Rona closed the screen and returned to her boring duty. As much as she was briefly tempted to use the embassy's sensors to keep looking outside the walls, there were limits. The Federation had strict privacy laws concerning the surveillance of its citizens, especially by a foreign power. Prolonged attempts on Rona’s part to extend the sensor’s range past the walls would trigger alerts that would have gone straight to her commanding officer and even the ambassador herself.

  All the young marine could do was await the next distraction until the end of her shift.