X & Y - Part 1/5

Xeraforming. With Respect.

Hello and so then, here's the next story in the Immigration Control collection. The previous one in this collection is Quantum Topography 101, which you can read there. From now on, as I said, it’s for paid subscribers only.

I really wish i didn’t have to do it this way. I mean, I would love to give all my writing for free, but I am poor, and I need to make a living somehow.

You’ve got so much else anyway, haven’t you?

Anyway, this is the last story in Part II of the collection. It’s actually about 12.8k words, now I revisit it, so I am going to have to split it up into five parts. Still, that does mean you get your money’s worth, eh!

Sure, the writing might perhaps not be the best I ever did, but it works. And it gets better, and as I may have intimated before this is like Act One of a story that should be turned into a novel.

So I am publishing it as it is, kind of like a first draft for all my true fans, in advance of what will eventually be that amazing novel which will, as Unofficial Katy will undoubtedly tell you, was eventually turned into an amazing movie.

I don’t need to tell you anything about it, as it explains itself. All I will say is that I was thinking about Venus a lot in those days.

I still think about her now. For what it’s worth, you know…

So there. Enjoy your introduction to Xaya. I have some other, beautiful stories about her.

But they are for another better time.

For now, she is about to wake up from cryosleep.

As should we all…

---

“Xaya?” Softly.

Her eyes flash open. Beautiful turquoise iris around a dark scarlet slit, half-slowly widening.

“I apologise for interrupting your meditation cycle, but I have received a transmission. Please come to Control.”

It would take Xaya-La only a few short moments to readjust. “What kind of transmission?” But she remained in the pool. The steam was too pleasurable, as usual.

“Initial analysis suggests audio and video, together with a large collection of images, the first of which appears to be a written alphabet. Most probably a language guide.”

“I see. Is this from the third planet? Via the probe? Has it arrived yet?”

“Motherprobe will be arriving in approximately six hours.”

She stared ahead with wide, serious eyes. “How long will it take you to decipher the language?”

“Two hours, perhaps. The alphabet does not appear complex.”

“Then I’m going to complete another cycle. I’ll arrive when you’re finished.”

“Acknowledged.”

---

Xaya had not lost hope. If and when that was the last thing to go she would give Qyi her final instruction, as she slipped back into the now-useless stasis pod. “Close the lid, turn the lights off and shoot me into the planet’s dark atmosphere. Then continue with the Xeraforming and, well, if no one arrives by orbit number three hundred or so then, well, I think you can assume that’s it. In which case, well, I don’t know. You choose.”

She’d rehearsed it a few times already in her semi-sleep. Sometimes her heart imagined that if and when that happened her pod might just, by the kindness of the Fates, come to rest just alongside her mate. She would hope Lyexa and his pod would not be long-since crushed and melted by now, along with all the others, if it ever even made it to the surface.

Hope is always the last thing to go.

Except now of course, depending on what level of technology these creatures had, they might be able to help before the life-support failed. Or maybe they wouldn’t.

Maybe they would just scavenge.