After dinner – or breakfast, as Willow called it – we went and got a telephone for my apartment, which Willow showed me how to work so he could get into contact with me if there were any changes. I was vaguely familiar with how they worked because there were a few in town, but I had seen so few and these worked a little differently, with there being an answering machine and even a caller ID. It was very fancy and everything I learned about it was added to a bank of information that I was sure was about to overfill and spill out of my ears.
It was a lot.
I needed to either start a journal or I was going to need to find a book on local customs and Novus culture because…
It was a lot.
Willow told me there were also mobile phones, but he figured that it would be best to save that for a little later once I had absorbed everything that he had already showed me, which I agreed with. When I joked about needing reference books, he told me that he would find out a good time to take me to the local bookstore, which he said would have info on anything I ever wanted, which I highly doubted. No bookstore could be that big.
There was so much that I had learned today, I didn’t know if half of it was going to stick, and while I wanted to half-jokingly express this to Willow, I had a feeling that if I did he would try to slow down things and further stall my marriage.
And I wasn’t at all interested in that.
Whatever I could do or say to speed along getting Joy, that was what I would do. I wouldn’t go so far as to lie, probably, but I would happily omit things that I knew might lengthen my wait.
So I just nodded and smiled and pretended that I understood what was going on while he explained how to pull up the guide on the television, even when I was completely and utterly lost. I figured I could learn later once Joy and I were settled, and until then I would just keep my ears open and try my best to act like I understood everything I was being told, even when it went straight over my head.
I was in crisis mode, and that meant learning exactly what I needed to learn to get what I had to get.
Everything else was nice and useful, but pushed to the back of my mind, filed away as unimportant until this crisis had passed.
Get Joy. Focus on how to secure a safe, happy and healthy life for her. That meant getting Novus mate. Bonus for me, it was a male, which was something that would have never have been allowed at home. Figure out how to mate with a Novus male as soon as possible so I could get Joy.
And then after that…
I’d figure it out.
The matchmaker, as I found out just an hour later, wasn’t just one person, but an entire company and operated out of a five story building that had several beautiful gardens around it. The inside was clean and bright and spacious and looked like a very large clinic instead of the living rooms and tea rooms I was used to visiting. There were a couple people moving about, some anxious looking, other annoyed, a pair that looked like a mother and daughter bickering as they walked quickly to the stairs.
No one looked happy or excited, and that worried me.
But I guess I wasn’t excited either, and when we went to the front desk, I caught my reflection in the glass table top and was proven right. I looked exhausted and anxious.
So I tried to focus on the positives.
I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but I could very much enjoy the fact that I would get to choose a man to be with. I’d never actually allowed myself to even fantasize about what that might be like because I knew it would only make reality so much more depressing because I couldn't have it…
But now here I was, on the path to have just that.
Vainly, I thought about how attractive it was to be with someone as strong as a Novus, all the males I had come across so far tall and muscular and very masculine, which were exactly my type. I wasn’t picky. I wouldn’t allow myself to be. I’d be happy with what I got. I’d probably prefer him to be a little older than myself and settled so at least one of us could have their life together and give our small family some stability right out of the door, but if he was my age or maybe one or two years younger and still in school, I’d make it work.
I’d make it work.
I’d find a way to make it work.
The receptionist gave us directions to where my assigned matchmaker, Mrs. Marge Dahl, was waiting for us on the third floor. When we got to her door, we found it was open and I looked in to see she had a two-room office where the first room just inside from the hallway looked much like any other office, but just beyond that was a much cozier and familiar room.
Plush seats, a coffee table, and a ray of cookies and tea, it was exactly like all the other matchmaker meet-ups I had been to with my parents, just with different wallpaper and flooring. Even the cookies looked the same, the tea smelling like it was chamomile, just like the ones all the other matchmakers gave. I know one joking told my sister that there was a manual they had to follow when Milla asked what it took to be a matchmaker.
Would she actually follow through with that dream?
Milla was obsessed with romance and loved to arrange dates for all of her classmates. She had started to keep a journal of all of her friends likes and dislikes and liked to bring it to the festivals to grill the local boys about who they were interested in, and given her friendly, caring personality, we all thought she would be a great matchmaker.
But I guess I’d never know if she actually became one, would I?
I would never know what became of any of my little sisters. I’d never see them get married, or watch them become mothers, or be there to watch raise their babies…
And they’d never get to see me do the same.
We’d never see each other or talk to each other or do anything together ever again, would we?
But perhaps this was God’s plan for me, and I guess the more intriguing question that I should wonder about was whether or not God had Joy born a Novus so I wouldn’t be without family outside the colony, or if I was born as I was with a preference for men so Joy would have a little bit of home with her.
I hoped the people she were with now were being kind to her – I needed to remember to write a thank you note to them when I got Joy back and perhaps an apology letter to any family that was going to get her.
Mrs. Dahl, an older woman dressed for business came out of the second room to stand beside her desk with a big smile as she waved us in. “Hello gentlemen, I’m Marge Dahl, and I’ll be selecting your matches for you. Feel free to call me Marge.”
“This place is dead,” Willow said in greeting as he ushered me to sit in one of the two seats in front of the desk. “This is peak hours?”
She didn’t look happy at that but nodded as she went back around to sit at her desk. “Of course, this isn’t during our peak seasons – that’s early spring and late fall, but since Claymoore has stopped working with us, things have been stretched thin. It’s worse in Campora, I hear.”
“Really?” Willow asked as he sat down in the chair next to me.
“Oh yes – they’re actually talking about liquidating the Grove Colony two generations early.”
Willow made a noise a that, looking at me. “Grove Colony is exclusively owned by Campora. They’re further north and not as big as River Colony, but still a prominent colony.”
“Why would they- ah – liquidate it early?” I asked, watching as Marge glanced at her computer screen before she looked back between the two of us.
“Not enough Sapiens,” Willow said, turning a little in his seat before he crossed his legs. “And if you don’t have enough sapiens...there are more conflicts between Novus, economy destabilizes. There is a fragile balance to society, and that balance gets thrown into chaos every time Novus outnumber sapiens.” He frowned and looked back to Marge with narrowed eyes. “What are you hearing about the clans splitting?” He asked as Marge leaned back and pulled out a glass box, Willow taking my right hand to bring it over and place my hand on it. The glass box flashed bright blue before Willow pulled my hand away and Marge returned the box to the drawer it came in, Willow explaining “She’s taking your fingerprints to make sure they match the ones in your file.”
“My fingerprints are on file?” I tried to remember when I had given them. I remember Roy and Mabel had to give theirs when they filled out an application for marriage, but other than that, I couldn’t remember anyone ever giving their fingerprints.
Willow nodded a little with a calm look. “Oh yeah. All babies born in the colony get a blood test done on day one, pretty much hour one from what I understand. It’s how they can tell right away if the baby is a Novus or not...there are prenatal blood tests, but those aren’t anywhere near as reliable as getting it right from the source. All birthing wards are windowless to avoid any accidental sunlight hitting an infant because they are hypersensitive to the light...when you get Joy, you’ll be keeping her in the dark for the first couple of months.”
I nodded. That wasn’t a problem. Though most sapiens in the colony had complete night blindness, I actually had excellent night vision, something Little Lawrence shared as well. It was our weird little superpower we both shared with Big Blue and a few select others in the colony.
“His niece, right,” Marge mumbled, “I have her file, printed it out a few hours ago…” I perked up, watching as Marge stood and went over to the cubbies along the wall to pull down a folder to open it and then pull out another folder, placing the larger one back on its shelf. She carried the folder over and handed me the folder.
I opened it and saw a picture and knew right away it was Joy - she strongly resembled Mabel’s side of the family with a round face, cute little nose, and a head full of dark wispy hair just like all Roy and Mabel’s daughters had.
She was beautiful and God, she was alive!
I inhaled sharply and looked to the matchmaker, the Willow. “So – how – how would I go about? Getting her? I have to get married, right? There’s no other option here?” I looked to Willow then.
Willow sat up a little straighter. “Normally, if you were her only living relative, then she would have been placed with you already, but given the fact that you are ignorant of how to raise a Novus infant, they will need you to have a Novus mate, as she requires a Novus guardian to take responsibility for her. If, say, you were here for a year and were prepped then things would have been different, but given the circumstances, it would be likely lethal to just hand her off to you. Novus infants are cute, but lethal right out of the womb if you let their little claws near your skin. Accidental parricide kills thousands of Sapien parents every year.” Willow said with a frown. “Novus infants are just tiny little frustrated predators until they are civilized.”
“A Novus infant,” I said to myself as I looked down at the picture again. She didn’t look like a Novus, but as I was finding out, they looked a lot more human than I thought. Her little face was like all my other nieces, her long sleeves hanging freely as they covered her hands where she held one against her face and the other above her head. There was a pacifier in her mouth and her eyes were closed, her perfect little ears just...perfect. Absolutely perfect.
I would have never guessed she was a Novus.
“Then...let’s find me a Novus mate.” I said firmly, holding up the picture to smile at Marge, “Can I keep this?”
“Of course! The entire file can go with you. Keep it on hand so you and your mate can have it for your records.” Marge leaned back and placed her hands back on her keyboard while I closed the file and held it neatly in my lap, keeping the picture in my hands. “So Laurie, what are your interests?”
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