If I weren’t already prepared to notice the differences, I might have thought I’d appeared in outer space. Within the last few days, I’d traveled to the Moon, Mars, distant future Mars, an alternate Mars, and the orbit of a satellite around distant future Mars.
In short, the differences stood out.
To start? My suit’s location in ti in space still showed as an error. If that weren’t enough, it did detect an atmosphere—oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen in Earth standard percentages.
It was almost as if the place had adjusted itself for the convenience of life forms that needed it.
Despite that, it did resemble outer space. Just like the last space within the device, darkness surrounded us, but unlike the “lobby,” the glowing spheres added so light.
In wasn’t sunlight. The darkness still ate it as if the spheres didn’t exist, but I could see within the spheres and so held worlds while others only glowed.
The green of a jungle dominated my view of the nearest. So creature akin to a tiger stalked a herd of animals that might have been gazelles.
I said, “Spark, are my grandparents inside one of these?”
Spark turned her head and though I couldn’t put my finger on it, sothing about her had changed. Was it a glint in her eye? An intensity in her gaze? I only knew a difference.
She said, “Your guess is correct and if you want to free them, you’ll have to find them first. An Artificer that understands what they can do shouldn’t have great difficulty. Think of it as a test. I’m responsible for administering them to Artificers to see how far they can be trusted with this device’s power.”
I extended my senses, rembering what Kee had shown , opening myself up to what I could sense around , but also to the energy around . In doing so, I realized that the energy around radiated out of the device itself.
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She’d said that young Artificers had a right to use the life support here. For a species that drew in energy from other universes and interactions between them, this was life support.
I looked over the space around . There had to be hundreds of spheres, all of them emitting a faint ringing noise to my ears when I used my Artificer senses. It was the sound of hundreds of small bells as if rung by a distant handbell choir.
“A test,” I said. “It’s to find my grandparents’ sphere among these many hundreds of spheres. After that, do you give access to the control center or are there more tests?”
She smiled, “You’ll find them or you won’t and we’ll see what happens after that.”
I liked her better earlier.
What did I know? I knew that my grandparents were sowhere around here and that an Artificer with a basic command of their species’ skills wouldn’t find it difficult to find them.
That ant that either an Artificer could search them all at once or that, for so reason, anyone with skill wouldn’t need to.
Another thought struck . I also knew that the test changed from one person to another. Not everyone had grandparents available for Artificer citizenship tests or whatever this was. Magnus almost certainly didn’t have living grandparents. Who could say what his tests would be about? I wouldn’t have bet much on the question of whether or not Spark would tell .
What made my grandparents and the rest of the League good candidates for a test? Their association with Lee might be a possibility. Govan had talked about seeing my “ancestry” in a non-physical part of .
While Kee hadn’t taught to look for that in so many words, she had taught more about my ability to “feel” other Artificers. I was, she’d told , doing more than I realized when I recognized Lee in alternate forms or sensed sothing about her when we first t.
The idea it might be related to my grandparents’ association with Lee received another boost when I rembered the ti Jaclyn, Cassie, and Marcus also felt an Artificer watching us. Lee explained that associating with him had allowed them to sense his attention and that the other Artificer was counting on our fear to cause us to reveal that we could sense it.
It was a trap that would only work on those who associated with Artificers, perhaps especially effective on those who associated with Artificers on the run from their own kind.
The only problem with trying that myself is that I couldn’t count on a visible reaction from what must be hundreds of pocket universes.
This was not obvious, but I had to start sowhere.
I took a breath and pulled in energy, using it to boost my ability to sense. If I were thinking in the right direction, I had a chance of sensing sothing unusual. I’d center in on that.
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