Gratuitous Epilogue : Touchstone Extras Read online

  Gratuitous Epilogue : Touchstone Extras

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 22

  Gratuitous Epilogue

  Touchstone: Extras

  Andrea K Höst

  Gratuitous Epilogue

  Touchstone: Extras

  © 2011 Andrea K Höst. All rights reserved.

  www.andreakhost.com

  Cover Design by: Andrea K Hösth

  ISBN: 978-0-9871514-6-9

  Published by Andrea K Hösth at Smashwords

  All characters in this publication

  are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead,

  is purely coincidental.

  DESCRIPTION

  What happens when the plot ends? A relentless barrage of weddings, babies, and planetary colonisation! Meandering through the two years following the conclusion of the Touchstone Trilogy, this self-indulgent collection of family reminiscence is more saccharine than dramatic, with the most action to be found in snowball fights.

  For those who truly just want to know what happens next, no matter how mundane, read on for the everyday, ordinary lives of psychic space ninjas playing house.

  Chapter 1

  December

  Wednesday, December 3

  Home-making

  Wow – feels like forever since I've written. December already. Kaoren asked me to start a new diary, for all I'm nowhere near finished reading him even the first one. But he's right that I place less of a filter on myself in these diaries than I do in any conversation, and we both look forward to our reading sessions. I'm finding myself with a lot less time to sit about writing though, so he'll have to make do with a monthly catch-up.

  The past few weeks have been all about planning our Arcadian house, tweaking and finalising the rough design we'd blocked out with the program I gave Ys. Kaoren, with his usual efficiency, had carted out a drone and obtained a proper topographic scan of the site for the house – above the waterfall and curving down one side of the little hill. It was great to see how into the project he was: the kids aren't the only ones who have been thinking long and hard about just what they'd like our home to be.

  Beyond a shelf built into the bed, I left our bedroom's design to Kaoren, since he has the best idea of what his Sights can cope with. I amused myself with a 'retreat' room – an idea Kaoren liked and promptly copied for himself. We ended up with a stack of three octagons which weren't quite sitting directly on top of each other. The bedroom is in the middle, on what would be the main floor of the building, with windows above the waterfall. There's a side door to a stairwell up and down, as well as out to the patio. Kaoren's retreat will be one floor down, and positioned toward the back, away from the central body of the house. It will be windowless with lots of shelving, and a rear exit to what will be a tiny sunken garden room where he can meditate. All those things in his quarters back on Tare will end up on the new shelves, presuming we ever open the way to Tare.

  My retreat will be an eyrie, a kind of rooftop pagoda with windows in every direction, an excess of window seats to loll about in, and a door to a walkway across the top of the centre section of the house.

  The centre of the building has the kitchen and the lounge and a workout room, and a couple of guest bedrooms and laundry and storage area and all that kind of practical stuff. The very large lounge opens on to a sprawling, multi-level patio overlooking the waterfall.

  The far tier of the patio connects to the kids' domain, which will be the largest part of the house. Two stacks of octagons linked by bathrooms. I was logically thinking of one room for each of them, but this turned into quite a debate thanks to Sen's insistence that Kaoren and I fill her life with babies. That isn't going to happen any time soon, and definitely not in the numbers she would like. But because it was easy to do, we added another two spare rooms in the kids' area to appease her and cope with overflow guests.

  Rye very definitely wanted the rear, lower room, opening onto the proposed back yard. This wasn't simply copying Kaoren – he wants a garden of his own, to grow vegetables and keep pets. Sen decided she wanted the room beside his – I suspect that this is all about being closest to the action in the main lounge room, or perhaps whatever pets Rye produces. On top of these two rooms is a play room for the kids, which opens out on the rooftop walkway leading to my retreat, and also onto the kids' part of the patio, and the two spare bedrooms, which will overlook the back garden. Sen has decided to lay claim on these in the interim, 'so they won't be lonely'.

  Ys and Lira opted for the top two rooms, which will be the highest point. The whole house will be sheltered by the mass of trees on the island, and partially shielded by the hill on the Pandora side, but with amazing views across the lake toward the water bird nesting grounds. Ys sectioned off her room into little roomlets, so that the bed isn't visible, and there's a sheltered study area – each section with its own set of windows. Lira, by contrast, didn't want anything interrupting her ability to see out, and wanted stairs down the outside of the building to the upper garden.

  Sen treats it all as a joyful game, with her playing princess, but Ys and Rye go through overwhelmed patches. They're beginning to accept that we mean it about becoming a family, that we're not going to change our minds, and that they're important to us and warrant a room of their own, just the way they want it. Lira's a more confusing case – she obviously grew up privileged and protected, but also terribly isolated. And she's been having a bad spate of dreams about fading out of existence. Sometimes the planning sessions leave her angry and upset, because she's not sure she'll be here to see the house.

  KOTIS Command has at least not objected to the idea of us moving. And, despite the enormous demand for construction professionals, we'll have our design back from our chosen architect soon and have been able to tentatively line up construction dates. That's a side-benefit of being 'Caszandra': something I vacillate between finding convenient and embarrassing. It's not going to go away, so either I work with it or I practice my pouting.

  At least the extra-special treatment seems to extend to all of the Setari – is a way of thanking them for putting their lives on the line. And there's a lot of prestige for the architect and builders, too. I'm pleased with the architect, Tel Sevra, because our house plans haven't appeared on the news. Yet.

  I want to make the house happen sooner rather than later, particularly to give us all more 'outside' life which doesn't get reported within minutes. One decision I've yet to make is whether to employ someone to help with the cleaning – we're going to try on our own at first, but it'll be a big house and it might be a bit much for the two of us. While I don't mind the kids having some minor chores to do, I don't want them scrubbing bathrooms, or any of the other things I've been fortunate to have KOTIS staff doing for me. Still, we'll have our own cleaning snot, which is, uh, a good thing, I guess.

  Also on the staff front, Maze tells me I might want to consider some kind of assistant. On Tare the interface made it impossible for people to actually post things addressed to me. There's a postal rule set up about unsolicited gifts to the Setari which has covered me as well – you need a verification code to send anything through the Taren postal system. The same set-up is in place here, but is a lot harder to manage, and the KOTIS support staff have had to deal with people just walking up as close t
o the building as they can get before greensuits intercept them, and leaving packages and presents for all of us. I'd never actually thought that through in detail, but of course Raiten's fan club alone could probably fill a room each month. The island and Setari guards will make it harder for people to do that, but non-KOTIS staff are becoming more mobile and will eventually have their own boats and flyers. The presents are just people trying to be nice, but I guess if we started accepting them we'd need a house twice as big to put it all in. And KOTIS is still blocking random mail and invitations and things, which is convenient, if impolite. But hiring someone to deal with that means less privacy.

  Among the pile of things I'd like to keep private is the treatment Ys and Rye have been going through to remove the scarring from their backs. We celebrated its conclusion by going to the island for a swim (Maze and Alay as our escorts this time), and even though Ys and Rye still wore the same shorts and shirt ensemble, I noticed a certain air of freedom which I think may be because now there's no risk of anyone seeing the scars through their wet clothes.

  As we grow to understand Nuran culture better, we're beginning to see why they wanted so much to hide it – a whipping which scarred was an extreme punishment, suited for some deep and heinous crime. The scarring marked them not as victims, but as monsters. For eavesdropping on a lesson. The expression on Rye's face when the blue bandages were taken off for the last time and they showed him an image of his back was enough to have me hiding tears, and Kaoren went incredibly quiet. He and Maze had a discussion about it afterwards, and neither of them could properly speak they were so angry. Not many people know about the scars, fortunately, and I mean to keep it that way.

  My bones have knit obediently, nanotech speeding the process enough that yesterday I was finally allowed to ditch the sling. Kaoren and I took immediate advantage of that, which we're not strictly supposed to do yet, but I've been not-ravishing him for way too long.

  And today, at long last, we went into the Ena (four squads and Tsur Selkie) and I did visualisations of Tare and Kolar. Tsur Selkie had me project his office first, where I discovered a large whiteboard-type panel of actual physical writing. Tsur Selkie's a forward-thinking type of guy, and set up quite a few contingencies, including this collection of details of what had happened on Tare since we blew the marbles. The same set-up had been made at the KOTIS headquarters on Kolar, except with a bunch of distinctive items in the room to make it easier for me to visualise.

  News was not completely good. Fourteenth had been in the Ena when the marbles were blown, and were listed as out of commission recovering from injuries. Third is back on duty as a seven-person squad.

  It was stupid of me to hope that Eeli would somehow have recovered.

  With Fourteenth down, there's only five active squads on Tare, but thankfully Ionoth numbers are significantly down on all planets, and they've observed the same sort of relaxing in the tension on the tears into real-space, so the Taren and Kolaren squads are coping. Having vastly more non-Setari manpower, they've made some progress in charting a path through deep-space, but estimates for completion are still in the months range.

  Kolar's news was unequivocally good. Their major Ionoth problem has long been middle-sized roamers, the number of which have practically dropped to nil since the disruption. They're also making moderate progress on the complicated process of charting safe passage through the tides of deep-space. There was a Kolaren in the room with that whiteboard, and Tsur Selkie had a brief formal conversation with him which was very funny because the Kolaren realised he had to be a projection, and was so distracted by that he kept not listening to Tsur Selkie.

  Then I fell asleep, of course, and woke in bed to find Kaoren curled around me, deeply asleep. I'm so glad not to be all broken and wincey any more, because there's few things nicer than waking wrapped in Kaoren.

  I've been reading the news while debating waking him up. All the Tarens and Kolarens on Muina have been very anxious for me to recover enough to check the situation on their home worlds, and KOTIS sent out a press release with the good news straight away. I've been managing otherwise to keep out of the news the last couple of weeks, for the most part by staying in and keeping my head down. I've been following a lot of the debates about the laws being drafted, but have gotten a bit tired of it.

  Most of the other news is about who has been granted various bits of land, and the progress at Mesiath. The first 'New Muinan' baby was born a few days ago. They called her 'Caszandra', and when I grimaced at that Kaoren informed me that she was hardly the first baby lumbered with my name, and certainly wouldn't be the last. 'Kaoren' has become a lot more popular for boys, too, apparently.

  He's looking particularly gorgeous, lying there asleep. Can't resist...

  Chapter 2

  January

  Thursday, January 8

  ET

  The gate to Earth opened!

  The monitoring drone gave us two days' warning of a probable alignment, sufficient for me to get completely worked up about the whole thing. I must have re-read my letter to Mum about a million times, and I swear Maze brought Nils and Zee back from the Oriath excavation just so I'd be distracted by the way they look at each other. [They behave almost as if they're not together, except just occasionally their eyes meet and – well, The Nils Effect triples.]

  They did distract me a fair deal, and I was only a little beside myself when the drones suggested the critical time was approaching. KOTIS Command (rather warily) allowed Kaoren and I and the kids to go, with First Squad and a bunch of technicians as escort, to spend a day there waiting for something to happen. I couldn't see any difference when it did align, and Alay was the one who tossed my (carefully wrapped and stamped and protected by a plastic wrap) parcel through. A fist-sized skitter-drone followed, just for a quick view and safely back again.

  Kaoren kept his arm firmly around my waist the entire time the greysuits were taking readings, and looked a great deal more relaxed after the gate had closed. I know he didn't think I was going to try running through it, but he may have been worried the gate would somehow reach out and snatch me away.

  The thing was, it took FIVE MINUTES to close.

  "I could have just turned around and gone back," I kept repeating.

  "Well, I'm glad you didn't," Mara said, amused at me.

  "So am I. But still feel like an idiot." Then I went and hugged my kids, and even Ys let me.

  Five minutes! It's not just the amount of time it stays open, either. The skitter-drone had brought back some perfectly ordinary images of a Sydney footpath – no more than a few metres further along the same street I'd been walking down on my way home. And the gate realigned exactly one Muinan year (and ten minutes) after I stepped through from Earth. The implications of that, of a predictable alignment to almost the same place, just floored me.

  Of course, we aren't certain it really is predictable, and there was damn little I could do about it right away except give Kaoren a few sleepless nights with my worked-up tossing and turning. I was glad, at least, that I'd recovered enough to do some carefully rationed projection work, which meant a week later I got to go into the Ena and try and visualise Mum to see if the parcel had reached her.

  I knew the answer to that straight away because she'd put the photos I'd sent in frames and set them on the bookshelf next to the TV. Pictures of me and Kaoren and our new family, right there on Earth.

  Jules was playing games with one of his friends, and leaped up shouting: "I told you so! I told you so!" and then to me: "You get to do all the good stuff, Cass!"

  Mum had been in the kitchen, but came out at the fuss and looked around at all the black-clad figures, then walked straight to me and hugged me hard.

  "I only just finished reading them," she said. "Your handwriting is so tiny – my eyes may never recover." Then she pulled back, blinking away tears, and examined me. "No more injuries?"

  "Not even a headache."

  I introduced her to Kaoren again. He
'd had me teach him how to say a few things in English in preparation – his accent is so cute – and Mum smiled at him and said: "I gather this is our second introduction, and so I'll say the same thing I apparently did before: I'll be glad to welcome you to the family when one of us isn't a projection. But – thank you, for so much."

  "Would you come here, Mum?" I asked anxiously. "If it were possible?"

  "Who wouldn't, dummo?" Jules put in. "Are you nuts?"

  Mum had given me a sharp look. "You've found a way?"

  I explained quickly about the realignment of the gate, and how we wouldn't even know for another year whether it really was a predictable pattern, and that I'd be trying to send her another letter then, and I started to talk overly fast and nearly lost the projection.

  Mum distracted me by catching me up on the news from home. Aunt Bet is having another baby, and Nan has sold her house and moved into an assisted care place. And Nick and Alyssa have hooked up! Mum said they bonded over being able to talk about me possibly being on another planet (which is not a story Mum has encouraged be spread far and wide). I think I must have been a bad friend to Alyssa to not realise that she liked Nick.

  I couldn't maintain the projection for much longer – looking at Earth takes way too much out of me – but before I dropped it Mum hugged me again and said: "Who wouldn't? Are you nuts?" and laughed in a wide-eyed way and then was gone.

  It will be more than a year before we can send another letter, and then it will be another year's wait and KOTIS Command has to consider the idea of telling people on Earth the location of an occasional gate to Muina, and might not give me permission, and I'm going to go do a lot of swimming in the hopes that it will stop me ping-ponging off the walls.