“Uh…it’s Chinese calligraphy. Probably the name of the craftsman who built it.”
“That’s not Chinese.”
“Are you sure?”
“Lyra.” Her flat tone indicates she’s insulted.
“Okay, okay. So it’s one of those other alien symbols.”
She shrugs. “I haven’t seen markings like those before.”
“Well consider two million Warriors with what… sixty some markings per Warrior, makes that…” Ugh, I suck at math.
“The symbols are not all unique. And they still haven’t cataloged them all.”
“Don’t give my mother any ideas,” I say, pressing my hand to my chest in mock horror. But the reality is that with limited funds, personnel and equipment, the Warrior Project is a slow-moving beast.
Lan laughs. I’m gonna miss that light trill.
“Seriously, Li-Li. It’s different. It might be important.”
“Important enough to keep my parents on Xinji?” Hope bubbles up my throat.
Lan straightens with enthusiasm. “Maybe. When you finish it, bring it to my mom.”
“Will do.”
It takes me the rest of the night to complete the piece. I’m not exaggerating. The faint smell of coffee wafts under my door as my parents get ready for their day. I stare at the…shield—for lack of a better word— because it’s a meter wide and a meter long, three centimeters thick and octagonal (of course—the aliens have a serious addiction to the shape…maybe they are sentient octagons? Hmmm).
The shield has a spiderweb of fine cracks and a few fragments missing here and there—standard for reconstructed objects, but the eight rows of markings are clear. Each row has eight different symbols, but they appear to be similar—like they’re siblings, with similar swoops or curls. Then another row also has eight unique glyphs that complement each other—sorry, it’s hard to explain. But one row looks like Chinese calligraphy, but I’m not sure.
What I’m certain of is, I’ve been living on Warrior planets all my life, but I’ve never seen anything like this before. Excited, I rush out to get my dad. He’s sitting at the table, sipping coffee and reading from his portable. My mother is at the counter.
Dad spots me. “You’re up early.”
“Come on.” I tug on his hand. “You have to see this!”
He follows me to my room.
Mom trails after us. “Lyra, did you stay up all night?”
Her tone is disapproving so I don’t answer her. Instead, I sweep my hands toward the octagon with a flourish. “Ta da!”
Both my parents gape at it in stunned silence for a solid minute. My father reaches toward it, but I stop him.
“It’s not dry.”
He snatches his arm back as if he’s been burned. When my parents still don’t say anything, I say, “This is important. Right? Something different?”
The silence stretches. Now it’s getting weird.
“Yes,” my mother says finally. “Different.”
“Lan said her mom, Dr. Maddrey, would want to see it.”
“Oh, yes,” my dad says. His voice is rough. “I expect there will be lots of people who would want to see this.”
* * *
There is a great deal of excitement from the scientists in our base over the strange object with the rows of markings. Theories about them fly faster than a Crinkler engine through space. The one that generates the most gossip is the possibility that the octagon is an alien Rosetta Stone even though it’s made of the same baked clay as the Warriors. Lan’s parents are put in charge of figuring out the mystery.
“I hardly see them,” Lan complains one night.
She’s lying on her bed and I’m sitting on her chair as we listen to Diamond Rockler. His voice is like honey— smooth with a thick sweetness. Rockler’s heart-melting lyrics fill the small room as a video of him plays on her screen. He’s talented and gorgeous and intelligent— that’s just not fair. Some people don’t even get one of those qualities.
“If anyone’s going to figure out what it means, it’s them,” I say. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind seeing less of my parents. They’ve been asking me to join the crews of people searching through the million fragment piles in hope of finding more octagons. More data, more data , my mom’s always saying. They’re drowning in data, but no one’s made any connections. I think they have too much data, but that’s me.
“Messages were sent to the other active Warrior planets,” Lan says. “The other language experts might have some ideas on how to translate it and they’re all looking for their own Rosetta Octagon.”
“As long as it keeps everyone busy,” I say, smiling.
Lan sits up. “Lyra Daniels, you’re not thinking—”
“I am.” I insert my tangs into my ears and access the Q-net via the two sensors that were implanted in my brain when I turned ten A-years old. Staying entangled in the Q-net for long periods of time is flirting with insanity. So everyone must be able to completely disentangle. It’s the reason terminals are needed to interact with the Q-net. It’s funny, to me anyway, that the terminal is a bland plate built into the desk. It’s some type of rare metal, but otherwise it’s boring in appearance.
Lan’s terminal has the same limits as mine, but I’ve learned how to mask my identity and bypass a few security barriers.
“You’re going to get into trouble,’ Lan says. But it doesn’t stop her from inserting her own tangs to trail me.
“Don’t you want to find out who Belle’s been hanging out with?” I don’t listen to her answer. Instead I concentrate. I view the Q-net as a sphere with a zillion layers, like a universe-sized ball of yarn. And, while I’m blocked from most of the layers, I can find...holes...in the security, almost by feel—it’s a strange sensation— and wriggle into an area that I’m not “technically” supposed to be able to access. We call it worming .
Video feeds from the cameras around the base pop up.
“Oh my stars, Lyra! You’re going to end up in detention if security discovers you.”
“Big if. Look, Mom, no ripples.”
“How did you…” She sighs. “Jarren, right? He taught you? You’re getting better at worming.”
I scan the images. People bustle through the hallways. Some stop to talk. The labs techs are busy doing whatever they do. No sound. That would be too creepy. And no cameras in private units. That’s an invasion of privacy.
“Found Belle.” I hone in on the camera in the canteen. “She’s flirting with that chemistry tech— what’s-his-name.”
“Trevor, but he’s too old for her. He’s like twenty-three A-years,” Lan says. “How do you know she’s flirting?”
“She’s flipping her hair and eyeing him as if she wants to eat him for dessert.”
“For dessert? Really? That’s gross.”
“Ah youth. So innocent.”
She smacks me on the arm with her pillow. “And you shouldn’t be spying on your friends.”
“Oh? Should I spy on someone else?”