It's My Party

They were operating in crisis mode. Right after Aggie paused in her room report, there were some strange muffled sounds and video of Aggie falling to the floor, and then Aggie's Leophone was powered off. There was no way Aggie would to that willingly, and their assumption was she had run into hostiles, number unknown. Emily's first priority was to block access from Aggie's last position back to the transfer room. They needed to keep this situation contained to one zone where Tom's and Carla's guns would be an overwhelming advantage. The second priority was to reach Aggie's last position and assess the situation.

Two tense minutes went by as Emily worked the teams together and forward. Mark was reporting that Aggie's Citizen ID was still active, and they had the unknown enemy's position blocked. The mood was tense but cautiously optimistic. Then Carla who by this time leading the point down the pale purple rooms let out a howl. "Fucking shit! We've been had! Tom! Fall back to the transfer room! Now!"

A moment later he replied with a cry, "You were right! We were suckered! There's a forth door in the room outside the transfer station. They used the movie screen to hide it!" Tom rushed into the transfer room and found the elevator closed. Opening it revealed an empty carriage.

Carla came charging out of the hidden doorway a moment later. A few seconds later she locked eyes with Tom and they shared their grief and frustration. Aggie had been kidnapped and her abductors had gotten away. The pale purple path of rooms formed an outside arc of the zone and had circled back to the transfer room. Their enemy could be anywhere in the pyramid now and were also free to move about. How would they ever find Aggie? And how long would her abductors allow Aggie to live?

Chapter 90.

Time: Monday, June 11, 2019 6:58 PM GHT (Great Hexagon Time).

Fatima was not a person prone to asking rhetorical questions, but she felt so frustrated she didn't stop herself. "What is going on here?!" she said loudly into the bridge. "With Alfonso we made a mistake. His mind had snapped and we didn't recognize the risk. But this?! Don't these people want to be rescued?!"

"For some reason, we're being seen as invaders," answered Carla.

Tom was sitting by her side and he added, "This was one slick operation. They picked the perfect zone for it, and they had just the right tactics to defeat us. What I don't understand is how they knew so much about us."

Carla turned to him and touched his leg. "Yes, that's a very good point. Fatima?"

"Yes?"

"Do you see what Tom is saying? If these people were our superiors in numbers, why not just meet us at a transfer room and tell us to get lost? We never announced our size in our handout, and we certainly never advertised we were armed. Yet we're being treated as if we are a superior enemy. Kidnapping is a guerilla tactic."

"I guess that makes sense," said Tom, "if they don't know us. It's less risky than a face to face confrontation."

"They're acting as if they're angry with us, or afraid of us," commented Suvarna. "Or both."

Carla nodded. "Yes, that's what it feels like. And to be afraid of us, that would imply they see us as a superior force, or at least a force that could hurt them."

Fatima replied with a question. "Your opinion then, on how we should proceed?"

Carla thought for a moment. "I think our current number here is about right. If we add more people and Aggie's abductors somehow know about it, that will seem even more like an invasion. Thank God they took Aggie's Leophone. They took her gear too. There's a backup phone in her backpack. Perhaps they'll try to contact us. That's what I'm hoping."

"Carla, as Aggie's second in command, you're in charge now. What are your plans?"

"For a little while at least, I don't want to do anything too aggressive. These people have just won a battle with us. Their adrenalin is probably still pretty high. I'd like to spend a little time here and search for clues. What I'm hoping for is that our… the other party contacts us. Let's listen to what they have to say."

"Sounds reasonable. Carla, anything or anyone you think you need, let me know."

"Right. I appreciate that." Carla could tell by Fatima's tone that she was agreeable to letting Carla begin searching the current zone for clues. "Carla out." It was a large space, seventy-two rooms. This would take a while. With Tom guarding the transfer room, the four women got to work.

Meanwhile, in a different section of the pyramid…

Aggie estimated she spent at least two minutes in the elevator carriage with her captors, enough for twenty jumps and perhaps more. Was there some issue with trying to disguise their trail with multiple jumps, or were these people taking the quickest jump route they knew to their desired destination? It seemed impossible to determine, so Aggie spent her time instead thinking about the motives of the people around her. Were they monsters, or just people doing what they felt they had to do? Aggie took heart in the thought that there had been no needless cruelty. Aggie's nose and jaw hurt where they had hit the carpet, but otherwise she was unharmed. "It could be a lot worse," she reminded herself, thinking of her neck. "That knife was sharp!"

After the carriage rides, she was walked through perhaps a dozen rooms and guided down roughly into a high-back chair. Hands encircled her neck and two thumbs lightly pressed against her throat. It was all the warning Aggie needed not to move. While she kept still, her hands were unbound and then rebound to the back of the chair. Aggie winced at how tightly the cords were pulled. She could also feel other hands pushing her legs apart and then lashing her ankles to the chair. Aggie hoped her interrogation would start soon. Having her shoulders pulled back like this would eventually give her a backache, and the tape covering her mouth had a really foul tasting adhesive.

Aggie heard her backpack being unzipped, and numerous hands began to pat her down for anything concealed she might be carrying. There was no respect for her modesty, but the hands weren't humiliating either, and when they finally stopped probing her, Aggie decided being frisked wasn't too bad. She was determined to treat her captivity as a simple misunderstanding.

A voice directly in front of Aggie pierced the blackness of her hood. "You ready to talk now Samantha, or do you need to sit here for a while first?"

Aggie nodded her head vigorously while making humming noises to remind her captors that she was still gagged.

The voice in front of her paused for a moment and then said, "Oh, all right. Sydney, remove the tape. Keep the hood on though."

Aggie felt the cord around her neck being loosened, and then a hand slipped into the hood and came to the side of her cheek. A moment later as the tape was pulled away, Aggie cried out, "Ouch! That hurt my lips!"

"Well you should have thought of that before you came hunting for us!"

"I… My society wasn't hunting. We were searching. We were trying to rescue you. And my name isn't Samantha."

A moment of absolute silence passed, and then the hood was pulled off her head. Aggie blinked from the bright lights around her.

"My God, she's right," said a woman holding the piece of tape. Aggie decided to assume that was Sydney.

Aggie licked her lips and was grateful she didn't taste any blood. "My name's Aggie and I've got a lot to tell you. How about you just let me talk for a while?"

It took more than an hour. Once Aggie got going, she felt overwhelmed with how many critical details there were to her story. But she could only talk so fast, and she didn't know how these people would react if she tried to link with them. So she kept everything verbal and in normal time.

It was a sad meeting. In her heart Aggie knew these people deserved to know about the world's fate, and she pulled no punches concerning Earth's last days. After that, most of her speech was received in stony silence. Aggie did learn the names of her captors but very little else. It wasn't until after 8 AM in local morning time (8 PM GHT) that Aggie finished her summary.

From the way the group interacted, Aggie deduced that the leader was Cordelia. The woman looked at Aggie thoughtfully and asked, "So you say your group can mind-read too?"

"Yes. We call it linking. And it's more than communication for us. I didn't stress it, but do you remember I mentioned boosting the mental ability at a Bee Park?" Aggie then went on to describe her enhanced abilities more fully.

For the first time, her captors seemed to be giving her skeptical looks. "You're claiming you have super powers?" asked Cordelia. Her statement had just the hint of the inflection needed to be a question. The rest was pure disbelief.

"Hey, this is real," replied Aggie a bit defensively. "It's an enhancement, just like the first drug we all got was an enhancement."

"So why don't you try to seize control of our minds?!"

"Yeah, right! I'm sure that would have gone over like a ton of bricks!" Aggie took a deep breath. She was still strapped to the chair, and by this time her muscles were getting very stiff. "Besides, dream linking doesn't work that way, and even besides that, it would be illegal for me to try it."

Katelyn stared at their prisoner. "Illegal?!"

"We have laws. Think it through Katelyn! For five months , we've had boosted people in our society living with unboosted people. We can't have people seizing control other people's minds!"

"It never happened?"

Another deep breath. "Not with me. In my society, it happened once under some very unusual circumstances. That was before we had laws about this. We have laws now, and besides, the thought is repugnant to me. I don't know. If you were about to slit my throat, maybe I would try it, try to capture your mind in a dream. Maybe in self defense, I don't know… Invading another person's mind, the concept is really horrible."

"So where do we go from here?" asked the leader.

Aggie shrugged her shoulders, partially to relieve her cramps and partially as body language. "That depends on where you want to be Cordelia. I have no idea why you're so hostile to us, but I respect your right to privacy. If you want our society to leave you alone, that's what we'll do. Remember my description of the census counter? Six men and seventy-six women, that's the count of the human species. A conflict between us would be insane. We would prefer to merge, but we're not going to try to force it. That would be ridiculous."

Aggie looked at her captors and pleaded with her eyes. "I'd love to tell the people I was with that I'm unharmed. They're my family."

Cordelia was silent for a moment and then glanced quickly at her team. "We're not quite ready for that."

"I'm willing to link with you, if you'll permit me," replied Aggie. "That would prove my sincerity. Within the link, there's no room for lies."

Cordelia cocked her head. "You admit you could trap me in a dream, and you're asking me to agree to this?"

"Well… Yeah, I guess I am. I will end the dream whenever you ask. You have my word."

On a leap of faith, Cordelia decided to agree. "What do I have to do?"

"Just look me in my eyes and be receptive for a link. I'll take it from there. I promise. If you start to pull back, I'll stop immediately." Cordelia nodded and complied, and a short moment later she gave out an incredulous gasp.

"Recognize the place?" a voice behind her said. Cordelia turned and saw Aggie standing behind her. Or at least she thought she did. "Can I touch you, or are you a ghost?"

"I haven't got the skills yet to deviate from being realistic. I only finished boosting a few weeks ago."

Cordelia stared at Aggie without understanding.

"I mean if you touch me, it will seem real, to me too. If you do something that really hurts, I might lose control. In that case…"

Cordelia's eyes went wide and she interrupted. "I'll die?"

Aggie laughed. "No! In that case, we'll both be back at the pyramid."

"Oh…" Cordelia did a slow 360 degree rotation. "This looks so incredibly real! My God, I'm here!"

"Thank you. I've been doing lots of practicing."

"Really? How do you practice for this?"

Aggie decided to give a very matter-of-fact explanation. "My days have been pretty busy. I practice dreaming in the evenings, with Mark before I started searching the pyramid. That's the man I think I'll marry someday. And since I've been here, I've been practicing with Tom."

Cordelia looked at her curiously. "You prefer to practice with men?"

Aggie nodded. "Almost all the women do. Dream sharing is a very intimate experience. When you're starting out, it helps to have a partner aligned with your sexual orientation." Aggie grinned. "In my case, that's a guy."

Cordelia shook her head, gazing at the room in wonder. "This is so much to take in." She gave a nervous laugh. "A square room! What a relief! Do you know what it's like to be trapped in hexagonal rooms for…"

"Half a year?" offered Aggie.

"What?"

"Haven't you noticed? I guess maybe at the equator, maybe not. All your days are the same."

Cordelia looked at Aggie thoughtfully. "We have noticed some things. The sun used to rise and set on one side of the mountains. Now it's the other. The movement is fast and extreme."

"Yes. This planet has a huge tilt and a very fast orbital period, 168 days. The summer solstice in the northern hemisphere will occur in just a few days. That will be July 1st on our new calendar. I'll tell you about it sometime."

Cordelia nodded absently and walked over to a window. She stood there silently for a long moment. And then her hand slowly rose and touched the glass. "My God," she whispered. "This looks real! Am I home?! I want to be! I'm back in Burlington! Was it the hexagon that was the dream?!"

Cordelia and Aggie were standing in Aggie's dorm room in Redstone Hall. Outside their window was a spring memory of a campus day. Aggie shook her head. "I didn't mean to torture you. Perhaps this was a bad choice."

"No, I mean really!!! Could we go and play tennis?! Or go past the soccer field and ice skate?! Could we?! Could we?!"

"Cordelia, this is a dream! We can not play tennis here!" Aggie paused and then sighed. "We can dream about playing tennis here. And within the dream, the two might seem identical. But they're not."

Aggie walked over to her desk and opened the top drawer. After a second of hesitation she pulled something out, an elegant gold writing instrument. "So many memories," she muttered. "Do you see this pen? My father gave me this when I was a junior in high school. This pen exists only in my memory now, just as my father exists only in my memory. These last few weeks, I've been coming back here. That's how I'm managing to make this place look so realistic, all the details. I've been practicing. I wanted to remember my parents." Aggie looked down at the pen in her hand. Her lips quivered. "This helped."

Cordelia slowly walked over to her and took the pen, admiring its beauty and its weight. "This is so much more than memory… so much more…" she whispered.

Aggie sighed. "And less."

"Less?"

Aggie nodded. "Assuming you decide to boost, you'll understand what I mean. I'm pulling all of this out of visual memory. It's a lot of work to keep the dream going. If I wanted to be creative, use my imagination or my morality to judge something, I'd be much better off just spending my time in contemplation. It's very difficult to make new associations doing this. Running the visual memory takes too much effort."

"Would another setting be easier? A blank room?"

Aggie laughed. "Yes, but that would be boring. Natural scenes are easier though, and much prettier."

Cordelia let out an involuntary cough. She was standing on a mountain ridgeline. "I know this place!"

"Ah, the Adirondacks. You've hiked them too."

"How do you know that?"

"We're sharing memories, remember? I'm cheating a bit here. It's late springtime, but I'm dreaming there are no black flies!"

Cordelia could help but laugh at her own memories of the vicious biting insects. "That does it! I'm convinced. The Adirondacks without black flies? That really is a dream!" She admired the scenery for a moment and then asked, "Your society will share the enhancement boost with us?"

"Well of course! This transition period has been a very difficult time for us, having boosted and non-boosted people living side by side."

"Why is this hard for you?"

"There's a desire to know things. I have a desire to entwine with you. But I'm resisting doing that, just as Mark resisted doing that with me when we used to link. I'm talking about the time before I boosted."

"You don't think I would have any control?"

"Very little. And once I got started, I might pull things from you. I wouldn't need your permission." Aggie paused. "Do you want this dream to end now?"

"You can sense my fear?"

"Yes, and I cannot ignore it. This dream should end."

"Hold off for a bit. I want to trust you." Cordelia paused and blinked. Did she really want to trust Aggie? How did that happen? Brushing the questions aside, she asked, "I want to be perfectly clear about this. Your society will share the boosting ability with us, even if we don't join you?"

"Oh…" Aggie turned to the side and looked at mountain peaks across the valley for a moment. "We never explicitly discussed that, but I would assume so. We don't feel we own the Bee Park. That's as much as I can say. Fatima is our leader now. We have a very simple government. It would be her decision."

"Ah yes, Fatima. You mentioned that name before." Cordelia looked troubled. "You also mentioned this Society of yours is creating a new religion?"

"That's right."

"And Fatima's doing both?"

"Everybody is contributing their thoughts to our religion. Fatima is just helping to guide the process. She acts as moderator at our weekly prayer meeting. Her role as secular leader is completely separate."

"The setup sounds scary."

"It's not scary."

"But… But…" Cordelia half shouted. "Everything is so crazy! Why are you wasting time?"

"On our new religion? It's not a waste of time. We do it because of what we are."

"And what are you?" Cordelia blinked after her question. She was now standing on a rough surface of black rocks. There was a forest behind her and a gray and frothy ocean in front. Cordelia thought she recognized the scenery. They were somewhere on the coast of northern Maine. It was impossible to tell whether the time was near sunset or sundown, but it felt like one or the other. There was a heavy gray fog covering the forest, with a cold spray in the air from of the waves crashing against the rocks below. The moisture brushed against her lips, and its salty coldness reminded Cordelia of winter.

"What are we?" asked Aggie, repeating the question put to her. Aggie took a deep breath before replying. "We are mist! We are waves tossed upon the ocean, and we are more! We are mist, and we are trying to build new definitions for purity and obedience, definitions that will accept our ability to doubt. We are God's mist, and we are God's children, and we are trying to build a new Salema, one that allows us to celebrate what we truly are, celebrate both our childhood playfulness and our adult sexuality."

"What?! I don't understand!" Cordelia paused and tried to grasp all that Aggie had told her. She asked, "you want to worship doubt?"

Aggie laughed. "What a concept! No, of course not! Are you playing with me Cordelia? I'm talking about our religious tenets being living documents, where we never surrender our responsibility to critique."