Tools
The other event that changed her life when Myrie was five and a half years old was about her appearance. It had been almost a year since her grandmother had started shaving and Myrie still didn’t have a single beard hair. And now she was the only one in the village like that, again. In a village where children were usually born with fluff on their faces. And the lack of a beard was not her only uniqueiness. Except for a single strand that grew from the middle of her head, where others had the parting, she had no scalp hair aswell. The hair had been green at first, but at the age of five and a half it began to turn grey. Furthermore, she was simply unable to care for this one strand of hair in such a way that it would grow longer than her ear. A few centimeters above that, they began to thin out and only a few hairs managed to tickle her ear from time to time.
Myrie decided to comb them to one side. It seemed to her that had she divided them evenly on both sides, she had boldly attempted to hide her otherwise bald head, and as much as she wished that maybe one day she would grow a mane like all the others, and it was simply a growth disorder or something of that sort, she still didn’t want to pretend that something was there, which was not.
She combed them on the opposite side each other day so that the sides of her skull would be treated the same. Some of the village children found this peculiarity hilarious and made fun of it. Myrie was by no means indifferent to this, but she found treating the sides of her skull unfairly even more unpleasant than the children’s remarks. And whatever she did with her hair, her family thought it was all okay. And so Myrie simply avoided the other children.
Only a few months after Gramma Lorna’s death, Myrie and Ahna detected that Myrie had grown larger than her sister, who was twice her age.
She had often asked her dad and Gramma Lorna what was wrong with her, but both were convinced that all was fine with her. She might be different, but that was just all right. But when she compared her height with that of Ahna and found out that she was 2cm taller than Ahna, she ran down to the workshop and stood up in front of her dad with her hands pressed into her hips.
“Am I adopted?” she asked.
Her dad turned off the grinder, put it aside and murmured into his beard: “I should finally tackle the table. I should.”
Then he took off his earmuffs and looked up.
“Again, please,” he said.
“Am I adopted?” Myrie asked again.
“You’re not, no. Your mother delivered you here when you were very little and asked me to raise you, which I did, but you are, in fact, my biological child. Although I think it doesn’t matter at all. I loved you from the very first moment and that will never change, no matter, if I am your biological dad or I am not.”
“Maybe she lied to you,” Myrie said.
That was rather unusual of her, to accuse some random or fairly unknown person of lying.
“I don’t think she would. There was no reason for that. Why do you think that?” her dad frowned so that the skin of his forehad would darken a little.
“I’m so different,” Myrie murmured, hanging her head, “No beard, hardly any hair, and I’m huge! I think I’ll be taller than you soon! I am taller than Ahna!”
Her dad stopped frowning and suddenly smiled. Myrie saw this out of the corner of her eye and looked up confused.
“Heddra is an orc, that’s why! I come up to about her hips. So you are a dwarf and an orc. It is, indeed, very likely that you will become taller than me. But probably not as tall as Heddra either. Maybe you will become taller than me by one or two heads, I guess. But of cource, you can’t say exactly. There aren’t that many children with a dwarf and an orc for a parent.”
With this, her dad destroyed all the images she had ever had imagined of her mother. Well, her idea of her mother had been rather vague to begin with. She had often imagined her mother hairless, it had to come from somewhere. But it was not easy for her to imagine a person as a mother whose dad only came up to her waist. After some effort, she finally succeeded.
“Do you have a picture or photograph of her?” asked Myrie.
She was somehow relieved to finally know what her characteristics were all about.
Her dad shook his head. “She’s rather withdrawn and didn’t want to. I had once thought about carving her face, but I never did that because I wasn’t sure if she would like it.« He pondered a little. »But let me think about it. If I do it only for myself, and show you because you are her child, and hang it up nowhere, then she would probably not mind.”
Years passed. Myrie had tried to make friends with orcs in virtualities, but without much success. She learned that she could adapt her body to her wishes in virtualities. She could even meet dwarves without them knowing that she had hardly any hair or was much taller. She was able to create a beard of her choice. She could adjust her height as she desired.
She learned from Gramantra how virtualities essentially worked. The wires in the wall generated an electromagnetic field that acted like magnets on iron. Her EM suit was called EM suit because a thin wire mesh was also laid through it, in which counter fields were created, so that attractive or repulsive forces were generated by her suit on the field around her. This way, physical resistances and invisible walls could be created. Her VR glasses then showed her the matching image synchronously, so that she not only felt the walls, but also saw them.
When people met in virtualities, the EM suits of the people at one location transmitted location data about where they were in the room and how they moved to the people in the other place. The electromagnetic field in the other room then created resistance where the bodies were rendered for the others. During transmission, the body image could be scaled as desired and morphed to something else.
But even though Myrie was able to meet others in this way who didn’t know that she looked different, she didn’t manage to make friends with others. It came even worse: everywhere, in every context, sooner or later she got herself disliked by something seemingly random. It most often was opaque to her why. Sometimes it was things about her that Gramantra explained to her afterwards, that she didn’t see or couldn’t change. For example, that she took too long to answer. Or that when someone said something interesting, she had to think about extensively for a while and lost the thread of the conversation.
And so Myrie kept mostly to herself. Or she watched small wildcats or one or another herd of mountain goats in the hills. Since that’s where she was drawn more and more often.
Little by little, she acquired tools and sometimes stayed outside all day, hanging in some branches while Gramantra explained the world to her. Slowly and with many breaks and thoroughly. At first, she listened to Gramantra through headphones. What bothered her about it was that she was less perceptual of bird tunes, the sound of the wind and other noice. And when Gramantra’s voice came from loudspeakers, it frightened the animals in the area. The solution she finally decided on were behind ears. Myrie was able to attach these to the skull behind her ears, and they generated vibrations directly in her cochlea by appropriately giving gentle pulses onto the skull. In this way, only she could hear Gramantra, even if someone pressed their ear directly onto the phones.
Her sweatband was equipped with excellent small solar cells. Thanks to still quite recent discoveries and developments about spin currents, which nowadays were much more commonly utilized than the less energy-efficient flow of electrons, – not the entire charge had to move, but only magnetic orientations of molecules had to rotate –, it was, that Myrie was able to talk to Gramantra all day long. When Myrie was out at night, though, Gramantra was still mostly on standby for power-saving reasons and Myrie rarely woke them up.
In course of time, Myrie accumulated a whole range of practical hooks and carabiners, a small arrow shooting device for attaching hooks to distant suitable spots, self-refluffing ropes, a sleeping bag using the same refluffing mechanism, a small, easily-to-handle drone, a remote-controlled masonry drill, small binoculars with camera function and clothing with many pockets in which all that fitted neatly, and which always stayed dry thanks to modern lotus technology. She had also a heat battery, which she could connect to her EM suit if necessary to warm up, and a good, simple lighter and a vastly versatile pocket knife.
It was a beautiful Nesday morning, one of the first days of spring without frost, when Myrie first climbed a rock face more than three times her height, which even had a slight overhang. When she finally pulled herself over the edge onto a slightly sloping platform, she was out of breath and her arm muscles hurt pleasantly. She trembled a little with exertion, rolled onto the platform and rested. The sun shone on her back and a light wind dried her sweat. The light evaporative cold was good. Myrie pressed her arms against the cool rock on which she lay and savoured it. She also savoured the time she had. All the time in the world, that was. She smelled her own sweat, the moss from the rock, and the scent of spring. She closed her eyes for a while.
Then, when she was breathing calmly again and had completely relaxed, she straightened her muscular upper body, let her legs dangle from the edge and looked down into the village. She had never seen it from so high up. She found that it was not as clear to see as villages from so far away in the virtualities. It had occurred to her before, but now she saw it quite clearly. A certain haze caused the colors in the village to fade a bit.
“Gramantra, are there perhaps very thin clouds between here and Byrglingen?” she asked.
“There’s a certain amount of humidity in the air, so that’s how it could actually be expressed. But the phenomenon you observe would also occur otherwise. Air is not invisible, but only very transparent.”
“True that, air is made of something, otherwise I wouldn’t feel the wind. What exactly is air made of then?”
Gramantra began to explain to Myrie in a calm, soft voice about the composition of air and the processes that happen when entities breath, while Myrie looked down into the valley and wondered if she would like the view of the village better in a virtuality. Surely she would have the free choice to set a haze there as well. Exactly according to her personal needs. But on the other hand, she also liked not being able to decide on everything.
Gramantra had long since faded into silence, Myrie was still dangling her legs and feeling a cold breeze that indicated the evening. She should perhaps head home soon before it got damp, making climbing more dangerous.
Her sweatband, in which Gramantra lived, became warm. It did so when Gramantra wanted to open a conversation, because Myrie wanted to be able to adjust to it beforehand.
“Gramantra?” she said.
“You have a great interest in the natural sciences. You seem very inquisitive. An AI may not be able to teach you everything you want to know in the field and you may end up asking questions that no one ever has answered.”
Gramantra paused for Myrie and then continued:
“It would therefore make sense for your education if you did attend school.”
“A school,” Myrie repeated suspiciously.
“A special form of learning community.”
“No,” Myrie said harshly. This was not the first time Gramantra had proposed something like this. The first time the AI had suggested this, Myrie had visited a virtuality on their advice where she was supposed to learn together with three others. And it had hopelessly failed. As always.
However, the argumentation had changed. At that time, Gramantra had said that social skills were a desirable but not necessary part of an education. Myrie should try it out. Now it sounded as if …
“You mean it has a different necessity than before? You mean that at some point I can’t continue learning without others?”
“Yes and no. AIs have a certain level of knowledge that is limited, especially when it comes to exploring nature and technology. If you want to learn something beyond that, you have to find out for yourself by thinking, or you have to rely on other methods. You can use AIs to help, but no AI can tell you exactly how. In that case, you would either have to come up with ideas all by yourself, or develop some with other people. There are very few who can do it alone. That’s why I encourage you to try a school.”
“What is special about a school? What distinguishes it from a common learning community?” asked Myrie.
“Essentially, it’s just that the learners are physically in one place, and not just meet in virtualities. This has the advantage that some safety precautions can be dropped under supervision and nature can be discovered together.”
“That, in fact, sounds exciting. But strangers and I, that has always been bad,” Myrie reflected.
“This is also one of the learning goals for the others. You haven’t tried it in a long time. Children your age are older now, like you, and possibly better at accepting that you are just the way you are.”
Again, Gramantra gave Myrie time to think. Myrie indeed hadn’t tried it for a long time. And when Ahna was as old as she was now, Ahna was already nice and Myrie had gotten along with her. Myrie believed. She wondered how old she actually was.
On the other hand, the cause for her good relationship with Ahna might not have anything to do with age at all, but was rather due to the fact that Ahna was her sister.
“Would Ahna come with me?” Myrie wondered.
“Probably not. And if she did, she would probably go to other groups because she has already learned much more than you. Ahna’s interests are also different from yours, so she probably wouldn’t want to go to a school with a focus on science.”
True that was. Ahna’s interests were more of an artistic nature. She liked to model virtualities in which one walked through painted, patterned, geometric structures. To do this, she worked with many colors and symmetries. She referred to the resulting virtualities as kaleidospheres. Kaleidospheres was a general term for three-dimensional geometric works of art that sometimes twisted into each other to create new patterns. Ahna’s virtualities were rather static. Some of these virtualities that Ahna modeled were white with black edging, and you could caress the walls and they became colored. Myrie often wandered through Ahna’s designs in the evening before falling asleep, choosing colors and sensing the walls. She particularly liked the kaleidospheres, whose different surfaces also felt different. Haptics was the word for how something felt, she had learned. She liked that very much.
There was something comfortingly relaxing about kaleidospheres, Myrie thought.
“But there might be someone like Ahna,” Myrie said to herself hopefully.
“Perhaps. Or a person with whom you can find a level of exchange that you don’t know yet and that is good for you,” Gramantra encouraged. “However, you ofton find it difficult to get involved in new things. Your fears sometimes lead you to assume immediately that you will be rejected, as a precaution. If people don’t approach you with interest from the beginning, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they have anything against you. Remember that it took you a little time to get used to Gramma Lorna without a beard.”
“But even if I needed some time to find it beautiful, I was never mean to her,” Myrie blurted out.
An unpleasant feeling rose in her. It was strong and awful, and Myrie couldn’t make sense of it or control it. She crossed her arms in front of her chest and gripped her bare shoulders very tightly with her hands. It didn’t hurt and it wasn’t meant to be. It helped.
“That’s not my point,” Gramantra answered. “If someone is mean to you, you don’t have to tolerate it. You may defend yourself, and if you can’t defend yourself, ask a person, for example me, for help.”
Gramantra paused for a moment in which Myrie could recover from her feelings from a moment ago. Myrie hadn’t really been so good at fighting back in the past. She had often only understood that she had been annoyed, but not what it had meant what her fellow learners had said to her. This made things more difficult for her and at the same time no less hurtful.
“But you also often suspect from the start when people are annoyed that it’s directed against you. Or if you made a mistake, that people wouldn’t accept you because of it,” Gramantra continued. “Your fear of rejection, which is well rooted in your past, is sometimes so great in stressful situations that you easily take something personally and very much to heart, even if it was not meant that way and you were not perceived negatively at all.”
This time, it took Myrie very long to absorb and process these words. Maybe Gramantra was right. Basically, Gramantra was almost always right. But if Gramantra was right on this matter, then there were certainly be very exhausting times to come. Then, from now on, basically every time Myrie assumed someone had something against her, she would have to pause and take a deep breath and then think about whether it was really so. For example, if someone remarked that she didn’t have a beard at all, or that she looked funny, then that might be a neutral remark and well-intentioned. But those words would remind her that people had also said that in the past who had intended to hurt her with it.
Myrie took several deep breaths in and out. Even going through it in her mind exhausted her.
“And you think it’s worth it? Are you sure?” she asked a little breathlessly.
“Such a thing is never certain. The statistics suggest that you have a good chance of finding a friend or two at Mount Era Boarding School. If it works out, I’m convinced that a friendship is something very good for you.”
A friend, Myrie thought. A person like Ahna. But maybe one who walked and climbed with her through the mountains. Or someone, like Gramantra, only with a body to touch. Fine it would be. A person who hugged her when she was sad, like her dad, only younger perhaps. From time to time, she had wished for another person in her life who was a bit like her. But others, who were half dwarf and half orc, were unknown to her. Such a person could not even be found on the Internet. Well, you couldn’t find her on the internet either, or at least not the fact that her mother had been an orc. Perhaps there was still a person who was like her in this respect. Or some other strange creature that didn’t fit in with others either. A sudden wave of courage surged through Myrie, bizarrely mixed with great fear.
“Okay, I’ll try it, I think.”
“Another problem you should consider is the local distance to your family. I already mentioned that you will be physically with other people. To do this, you have to physically get away from your family. Of course, you could decide to go home at any time, but the journey takes roughly 5 hours from Mount Era Boarding School to Byrglingen and there is only one direct train connection every two days. Meaning, in that case you would miss lessons and that is not welcome. But in the event that you’re not doing so well, that’s always okay, of course.”
At first, Myrie spontaneously again rejected the idea of trying it. But then she thought that she had already spent a night or two in the mountains, and she didn’t mind seeing Ahna and her dad again only the next day.
“I can go home on the weekend, though?” Myrie asked, just in case.
“Every weekend, if you want. There are also weekend trips with study groups from time to time, but for these you register or deregister separately, and if you don’t register, no one expects you to be there.”
So it was a maximum of five days at most that she had to endure away from her family. Four nights. And she didn’t really have to: if she thought it was too bad, then she could still break it off. She thought that if she made herself unpopular, if she went away in between, even though she shouldn’t, that they would certainly be so mean to her afterwards that she would break it off completely, but it still took away some of her fear, this certainty that she could break off everything at any time.
Her heart raced much harder from this idea than from the effort of climbing. Gramantra on her forearm permanently measured her pulse and blood pressure at her request and now recommended a few relaxing breathing exercises with her eyes closed. That helped. When she opened her eyes again, she felt the cold air on her eyeballs and her arms were still shaking slightly. She would probably wait a little longer and watch the birds fly before she would descend again. But she had hardly had a chance to calm down when her sweatband warmed up again much too soon.
“Gramantra?” she initialized the conversation.
“Your sister Ahna is calling.”
“Okay,” Myrie sighed.
“Will you be home in two hours?” asked Ahna’s voice, which was now transmitted to her ear. She sounded excited.
“In three, I think,” Myrie estimated. “What’s the matter?”
“I have a surprise for you!” Ahna said, and Myrie clearly heard a grin from her voice. “Nothing big!” she added quickly, knowing that Myrie wasn’t so good at dealing with big surprises.
Myrie sighed again, looked down the rock face for the first time since she had been up and thought of a strategy to get back down. It wasn’t that difficult. She could simply abseil down with cleverly attached hooks and her climbing rope. The part of the climb that had been easier on the way up turned out to be much more difficult on the descent, but that was nothing new for her. She couldn’t just abseil down from the non-vertical slopes. Of course, she secured herself decently here as well. If she had simply slipped down here, she would certainly have cut herself mightily on several rock edges. She covered the distance quickly. Her body longed for exertion after the long rest and she felt fabulously good when she experienced how much control she had over it.
She was quite good with her estimate. After two and a half hours, she had left the steep part of the mountain behind her and could now walk the rest of the way along the Glukka to the village. But she didn’t do it right away. She took a break to clean, neatly fold or tuck her gear in the creek and put it in all the right places in her trouser and vest pockets. Then she washed herself. The water was still icy cold, but Myrie’s active circulation quickly warmed her up again.
When she finally reached the village, it began to dawn. As she turned into the Garden Path, a hearty, unfathomably good scent rose to her nose and she wondered why she hadn’t noticed how hungry she was until now. As if it wasn’t enough, this fabulous smell came from her dad’s house, out of the open kitchen window. Myrie ran the last bit light-footedly to the window and swung herself over the windowsill.
Her sister stood at the printer and handled a touchscreen. “You’re ten minutes early, I’m just close to done yet!” she said, almost a little disappointed, without looking up.
Her face was highly concentrated while her fingers wiped over the foil. Steam was pouring out of the printer, and through the fogged-up glass, Myrie could just see how the tubes with the nozzles at their ends were printing some structure like a colorful cylinder that had many geometric pits. It was like one of Ahna’s kaleidospheres, Myrie thought, only made of food. And judging by the smell, Ahna had chosen a fantastic combination of flavors on top of that.
“You should absoloutely build and save a cooking design, I guess,” Myrie murmured reverently. Her stomach noisily announced that it was dissatisfied with the current placement of the food outside of it.
Ahna smiled at Myrie’s remark. Finally, she turned around and hugged her sister.
“Happy birthday, Myrie,” she whispered to Myrie’s face.
“Oh, it’s my birthday? What age do I turn?”
“Bemused, as always. You’re turning 11. Unfortunately, your stomach will have to wait a little longer, it needs a little cooking still.”
“Do I hear the voice of my birthday child?” Her dad had found his way from the workshop into the kitchen and he also hugged Myrie.
“That didn’t come through the door, apparently,” he grumbled.
“Dad, I want to try another learning community, – a school,” Myrie announced.
Her dad paused in the movement of embrace. Myrie pushed herself free to look into his face. It didn’t seem joyful, but almost worried, she thought. He nodded slowly.
“Perhaps that’s a good thing. I can’t judge it so well, but if you want to, then of course you can,” he finally said.
“Isn’t a school a learning community that is locally separated from us in reality?” asked Ahna.
Myrie nodded.
“You’re leaving us?” she asked, shocked.
“No! No. Well, for every week, but I’ll come back every weekend!” exclaimed Myrie excitedly.
“I’d think that you either hold out for more than half a year and then only come to visit us on a few weekends and during the holidays, or that after six months at the latest it’s so terrible that you don’t want to go there anymore,” her dad reflected.
That confused Myrie. Why should she not want to go home every weekend at some point? The second option seemed familiar to her, of course. And she loved her dad for saying something like that bluntly.
“And it’s no shame if you decide after a week that you never want to go there again. Or after a day. No one here will scold you, I want to promise you that. But if you really want to know if it’s working out for you, I recommend that you try it out for a month or two, if it’s not terribly horrible. It often takes you a long time to get used to something. Even if you really liked something in the end, you often had trouble with it in the beginning. That’s how you felt about most virtualities, and that’s probably how you will feel about school.” His thoughts had certain similarities to what Gramantra had said earlier, Myrie thought.
The next few days were exciting, not necessarily positively exciting. First, she went through her decision a few more times with her familiars, alternating with Gramantra, Ahna and her dad, to see if she felt certain about it. But usually she stuck to a decision once she had made it and this time was no exception.
Then her dad clarified formalities. There weren’t many, after all. Myrie only had to accept the house rules of the Mount Era Boarding School, choose subjects from a list and be registered. Apart from that, she was given a plan of the school and the school grounds and a date on which it started. Gramantra booked a train connection for her that would arrive at the Mount Era Boarding School the night before and Myrie also found that very exciting. The railway station of Byrglingen was almost two decametres below the village. Myrie had been there many times, watching trains glide quietly through the tunnel and picking up an order or two of recycled wood for her dad. But she had never taken a train before.
“All you have to do is be at the station before the departure time, like you did to pick up orders. But this time you get on and follow the instructions which of the capsule or capsules will go to your destination,” Gramantra said and assured: “Since I booked the trip, there will be at least one capsule going there, but since several learners will go there, there could be a few more. You might even meet future fellow learners on the train.”
“I’d rather have a capsule for myself,” Myrie pondered. “It’s certainly enough if I try to make friends only when I’ve arrived.”
“If you refuse when others want to sit with you, it could also be perceived as rude, or you as unapproachable, which you may be. But if you want to make friends, it may be a good idea to respond to requests as openly as possible. Of course, only if it doesn’t stress you out too much.”
But the very thought stressed her. Nevertheless, she took Gramantra’s advice very much to heart and tried not to let her fear of others overwhelm her. Every night, as she fell asleep, she practiced being kind to others in her mind, maybe even talking to them. Most of the time it worked out quite well at first, but as soon as she started to lose control of the scenarios because she gradually dozed off, the situations always turned terribly. The others who were introduced then ignored her, or mocked her, or felt some peculiarity of hers as a no-go. One night she remembered that she had little hair and could hardly hide it at boarding school. She ran to her dad in his bed and, contrary to her habit of not overturning decisions, she told him that she didn’t want to go to boarding school after all, and whether it could be reversed. Her dad took her in his arms and said reassuringly, “Of course.” But he suggested she should wait until tomorrow. Maybe the next morning she would have a different opinion. Myrie slept in his arms, where it was warm and felt protected, where she was always sure that her hair didn’t matter, and the next morning she indeed had new courage. And she gave up trying to invent scenarios in her head. She had tried long enough to believe that she wasn’t really able to come up with any realistic scenarios.
The departure date was at the end of summer and she enjoyed this summer to the fullest. She improved her climbing skills and trained her body even more and with targeted exercises. She also practiced more elaborately on the falling exercises she had included in the program on Gramantra’s advice since she first climbed a tree. They had already served her well on a couple of occasions.
She read the house rules thoroughly and learned the map by heart as much as possible. The list of house rules included only a few strict instructions and a long list of rules of conduct that were desired but not necessary. For example, unpunctuality was perceived as disturbing, but there were no warnings or penalties, at worst angry looks, if you didn’t have a good reason.
But what were good reasons, Myrie wondered.
One of the few fixed rules, a violation of which could be followed by a warning, or an expulsion after several warnings, was that the adjacent forest and the mountain next to which the school stood could not be entered without the express permission of a teacher. A 2.5-metre-high trellis delimited the area where learners were allowed to move freely. Entering the experimental rooms was also only allowed with the express permission of a teacher.
And that was it. Well, of course you had to adhere to the general state laws. For example, physical violence against others was prohibited unless consensual or self-defence. But that was not listed separately in the house rules.
The day before Myrie’s departure, Ahna printed her birthday cake again. Ahna seemed dejected, and Myrie could understand that. On the other hand, she was so excited that there was no room in her to be dejected herself.
The cake was actually more of a main course, but Ahna had called it Myrie’s birthday cake. Myrie usually preferred savoury rather than sweet, and liked to eat tastes separately. And Ahna’s cake was designed for it. It had different areas, each of which was monochromatic and had its own consistency and taste. In this way, a juice-green, soft, creamy area could be wonderfully spooned out of a red, foamy firm matter. And so Myrie did. She always chose one color and ate it without touching another. And she wondered when she would eat something so wonderful again and what food there might be in the boarding school and whether it was so easy to separate.