<<Right this way, Laotyn.>> The supervisor gestured towards the pods, and Laotyn followed the gesture hungrily. He was so close.
But then he hesitated, right on the brink of everything he had been waiting for, suddenly nervous. <<I’m – I don’t–>> How could he ask her advice? He didn’t even know her name. <<We haven’t been…introduced.>>
Pale pink bloomed in her centre and threaded out through the yellow of her welcome – he had embarrassed her, and Laotyn felt himself colouring in response.
<<Oh, dear, of course not! I was too caught up in everything, and I’ve been reading your application and work records all morning, so I felt like we already knew each other.>> With an effort, she smoothed herself back into yellow and constricted into a more formal sphere shape. <Greetings, sibling,>> she said, offering him the traditional salute. <<I am Lyia, coordinator of the Issia Observation Deck.>>
<Greetings, sibling Lyia,>> Laotyn replied, glad for once to take refuge in the familiar greetings. <<Good winds to you.>>
<<And to you.>> Then, the forms attended to, Lyia lapsed at once back into her disc shape, short stubby tendrils already reaching for the keys to her informational displays. <<And now we’re introduced, let’s get you into your pod! Ooh, I can’t wait to see your colours once you’re in. I remember how I felt the first time I saw Issia, really saw it, not just on a screen. It’s going to be one of those memories that my children are going to give to their children, forever and ever, just like ones from Home. Something big. Something really important.>>
The rush of words flooded over Laotyn, leaving him dazed and uncertain in their wake. He quivered for a moment, and then contracted his bulk in agreement. <<Y-yes — I’m sure it will be.>>
<<Well, come on, then!>>
Lyia keyed a button, the same bioluminescent algae as all the others surrounding her, and Laotyn watched as the walls separating the central chamber from the pods thinned. The blurred shapes beyond grew clearer, and Laotyn immediately zeroed in on the doorway with no shadow behind it. That was the pod that had been so recently vacated – the pod that would be his!
Lyia ushered him forwards, and he hurried to follow her directions. Up he floated, until he was close enough to touch it. One little nudge against that membranous door and it would give way and let him through, and his future would finally become his present. His body pulsing with hope, with trepidation, he lingered there, right on the brink of it. For one long second he paused, his tendrils almost brushing the door and then drawing back as he tried to impress the moment upon his memory. Tried to embed it into his very cells. A key moment. A really important memory, just like Lyia had said — one that he would treasure for the rest of his days.
<<Go on!>> Lyia chirped, not understanding the gravity of the moment for him despite the colours spiralling through his body — and how could she, how could anyone understand just how long he had waited for this day? — and she extended a lump of her body to push him inside.
And then suddenly he was there. Inside the sanctuary. The shrine he had pined towards for so long. It was perfectly round, and the algae-bubble walls were the same translucent, milky cream as any other. The light that shone from within them was muted.
But there were differences, too. This was no ordinary chamber. There were sixteen holes in the chambers sides, and beyond those, Laotyn knew, waited the receptors that would boost his own natural abilities far beyond anything any individual was capable.
To Laotyn, even the air itself tasted different in here. More special — no, no merely special. Sacred.
<<It’s a very simple interface, really.>> Lyia’s voice cut into his thoughts, the message delayed because of the barrier blocking him from the particles she was emitting. <<Just plug in, and away you go. You’ll find it easier just to learn by doing. All the training in the world couldn’t prepare you for the way doing this feels.>>
Laotyn undulated for a moment. Could it really be so simple? Just reach out, and take it?
<<Go on, just give it a try!>> Lyia was waiting, watching, and Laotyn knew he could not disappoint his new supervisor on his first day — no matter how unorthodox she was.
There was nothing for it. The time had come.
Carefully, he shaped himself. Sixteen tendrils extruded from his central mass — not one more or less than was required, and each the perfect width.
With slow, painstaking caution, Laotyn inserted himself into the receptors —
— And he throbbed with one desperate burst of bright white as the world outside rushed in upon him and swept him away.