“Stubborn male,” Surkah grumbled to herself before turning her attention to me. “Are you well, tiny one?”
Her voice was so clear and well-spoken that for a moment, I felt dazed at the soothing calmness it provided.
“I have so many questions.”
“Ask away.”
You got it.
“How can you speak English so well?”
She tapped on the section of skin behind her right earlobe.
“While you were sleeping, I inserted a tiny translator into the kornia section of your brain. There is no translation for kornia, but it is a region of the brain. I feared it would take a long time to work, but as we can hear each other clearly, it is working perfectly.”
I touched the spot behind my ear, but I felt nothing.
“So right now,” I began, “do you hear English or your own language?”
“When you speak, I hear Maji language, and when I speak, you hear human language. Your selected human language anyway. I cannot believe there are so many. There is only one Maji language.”
I exhaled. “That is crazy. I don’t hear anything other than perfect English when we speak.”
Surkah smiled. “The translator makes it possible.”
“I loosely understand that, but what I don’t get is the Maji who … saved me from the watchman. They spoke English, a choppy version, but it was English, and I understood that. I didn’t have this translator in my head then.”
“It’s hard to explain, but the Maji would have thought their words, and through their comms, the translator would relay the message to them in your language, and they would just verbally repeat it. It is the reason it sounded odd. The Maji were just repeating the words since your language is foreign to us. The males informed me that it is difficult to make the correct sounds when speaking your language because their tongue moved too much. They’re trying, though; even now, most of them are talking in English, Spanish, and Italian to those without translators to try to … fit in. Many have practiced on our journey here, and others for even longer.”
What is a comm, and how can the Maji silently communicate with it?
“I’m so confused.”
“About the translator?”
“About everything.”
“Ask more questions,” Surkah encouraged. “I will answer them as best as I can.”
“Okay … what is a comm? Mikoh said you disconnected your comm from the System, and you just said the males who saved me used their comms to speak English to me.”
Surkah tapped behind her left earlobe.
“Comm is short for communicator,” Surkah explained. “At birth, a Maji has his or her comm inserted into the vixer. I am also aware the vixer has no translation in human language, but it is simply another name we have for a certain region of the brain. After insertion, a comm remains dormant until our tenth year and then activates. We Maji use a greater percentage of our brains compared to humans. Our comms grow with us like an extra organ. With it, we’re all connected to the System node that connects all Maji. Of course, the higher your rank in our society, the more access you have within the System. Mine is restricted on Ealra —my home world— and on board the Ebony—that’s the name of this ship. I am only allowed access to the medical wing, its equipment, as well as the life pods in case of emergency evacuation. Mikoh and the shipmaster are the only Maji I can contact and who can contact me, but I was tired of listening to them give me orders and telling stupid jokes, so I disconnected myself from the System. I’ll reconnect later, but for now, I’m enjoying a non-crowded mind.”
What. The. Fuck.
“I’ve never heard of anything like that before in my entire life.”
Even our augmented humans couldn’t mentally talk to one another, not that I knew of anyway.
“Is it strange?” Surkah asked, seemingly amused at my shocked reaction. “I have never given it much thought. It is part of the Maji way and always has been.”
“This is a lot to take in.”
“I am sorry; I thought humans were educated in other species.”
“We were aware of other species, but we were never allowed to be thoroughly educated beyond what the Earth’s government wanted us to know. Knowledge is power, and that is something our government doesn’t want its citizens to have.”
“That is a great shame.”
You’re telling me.
“Where are the Earth’s officials?” I asked, frowning. “Why am I not with a human doctor right now?”
Surkah licked her lips. “It is not my place to say.”
That was another red flag in my mind, so I tried to steer away from the topic of Earth, and its government, until I wasn’t strapped down to a bed. Surkah had healed me, but I knew it wasn’t out of the goodness of her heart. No one did something for no reason; there was always a reason for someone to help someone else, and there was also always a price to pay. Surkah was being kind and answering my questions, but I knew it was just to keep me calm. I was in this room for a reason, and I didn’t want to stick around to find out what that was.
“So,” I said, changing the topic. “Why did you say you didn’t like to have males in your head twenty-six intervals a day? What’s an interval?”
Surkah raised a brow. “Well, a typical day on Ealra is twenty-six intervals long.”
Wait a damn second.
“Interval means hour, right?”
“‘Ow-err’ does not translate into my language.” Surkah frowned. “Um, an interval is measured by fifty minutes on Ealra. Do you understand what minutes are? One minute has fifty seconds. It is our concept of time.”
“Yes, yes. We use minutes and seconds too, but they are measured differently. One hour—sorry, interval—is sixty minutes on Earth, not fifty. The same goes for seconds.”
“That is just because of your orbital period,” Surkah explained. “Time works differently on each planet in each galaxy based on how long it takes their planet to orbit its main sequence star.”
I never thought of that before and it blew my mind.
“That’s crazy. They are only twenty-four hours on Earth—I mean, intervals.”
Surkah smiled. “I am aware.”
Clearly. The Maji was totally aware of Earth since they were here. That brought me to my next question.
“I’m confused as to why you are here, and why you think humans are the salvation to Maji, and about how humans and Maji are compatible. What does all that mean exactly?”
“Well—”
I jumped when the doors to the room opened once more, and instead of Mikoh standing there, it was a different Maji. A tall Maji with grey skin, violet eyes, and menacing gold-capped teeth. It was him, the Maji who saved me from the watchman. He had on the same uniform as Mikoh, but my alerted state allowed me to notice what I hadn’t noticed about him before. He had shaggy black hair, and on the sections above his ears, the hair was tightly braided to his scalp, keeping the hair from falling forward into his face. His eyebrows were dark, thick, and nicely positioned above his large eyes. His jawline was so sharp it could have cut something, and on his neck, a jagged white line peeked out from underneath his jumper top.
Oh, my Almighty.