Ithaca slapped her hand on the bedside table as her tablet chirped at her again, louder than ever. She rolled over, squinting at the screen. ‘Congratulations, you are nine thousand days old.’ She read it and groaned, tossing the tablet back onto the table before rolling over again and pulling the pillow over her head.

The bliss of starting to fall back to sleep had just started to build when someone pulled the shades open. “Good morning kiddo!” Said Notrotu happily, and she rolled back to throw her pillow at him.

Notrotu was Cathinis, tall and thin and glassy skinned that did nothing to hide his pale blue muscles or coppery veins. “Oh come on, you told me to wake you up in time for work!”

“Work is in five hours you tosser!” She growled, sitting up with a crick of her back. “It takes me ten minutes to walk to the tube and about five to get there from the other end. What do you want?”

Notrotu pulled something from behind his back. “I got you a present.” He said, and smiled, his curling lips not revealing any more teeth than the translucent skin did. Ithaca sighed, and took it off him. 

“Thank you. This is, very thoughtful.” She said, and unfolded the paper. It was old paper too, thick and resistant to her fingers. “Where did you find paper like this?” She asked, a hint of surprise in her voice despite how tired she was.

“Boytan, far side.” The Cathinis said, sitting on the edge of her bed. “Took me a score days to get there and back on tubes. Didn’t you wonder where I was?” He asked, giving a mock hurt look.

She smirked. “Thought you’d learned your lesson from last time you got me up early.” She said, and slipped the contents out of the package onto her lap. It was a black strap with a small round object half way down it. “What’s this?”

Notrotu picked it up. “It’s a, watch, I think. At least that’s what the trader said. Really old as well, came from an area they were turning over for renovation work. And judging from the lettering, it’s human!”

She turned it over as he handed it to her, and glanced at the odd face, three tiny pointers protruding from the middle towards a ring of numbers. “Oh, it’s a time piece.”  She finally said as a few stray cells in her brain finally woke up. She frowned as she looked at the face. “Why are there only twelve numbers on it?”

“Novelty item?” Suggested Notrotu. “Or some primitive way of telling the time? Or, maybe left by some Before nutters to throw people for a loop.” He smirked. “Not that it’ll do that to me, I’m far too modest and sane to be tricked like that.” He placed his long fingers on his chest theatrically, and Ithaca laughed.

“Well, left by crazy cultists or not, I love it.” She said, strapping it to her wrist. She glanced at it again. “I take it that it’s not working right now?”

“And why would I get you something that works, and deny you the chance to show how fine an engineer you are?” Said Notrotu, getting up. “Now, come join us for an anniversary breakfast! You only turn nine thousand days old once!”

“Speak for yourself.” Said Go’Nra’Thun, passing her door, the Jovani plant man heading for the showers at the end of the hall.

Ithaca swung her legs out of bed, and glanced out the window. The sky was fairly cloudless by the look of things, and she tapped the weather app on her tablet. “Clear skies today.” she said, leaving her room and passing Go’Nra’Thun as he waited to use the shower. “Good for you, right?” 

“If I was taking cuttings again, sure.” he sighed, leaning against the wall, his leaves flicking across his head. “I’m getting sick of it, taking a cutting, raising it, passing on who I am, then withering. I just want to move on, let another generation take over.” He took a step closer to the bathroom as a Drillornai passed by, its gasiouse form inflated from the hot steam in the shower.

“You could move to a woodland, find a mate?” Suggested the cloud of intelligent vapour as it passed them, smelling softly of mint and lime.

Go’Nra’Thun rolled what passed for eyes. “I hate the woods. Most of my species are just tree hugging idiots!”

Ithaca felt her yaw open to ask how that was any different from loving yourself, as a plant, when she saw the landlord step onto the landing. “Will you lot hurry up, hot water don’t grow on trees!” he shouted, stepping aside as one of the other tenants slithered past him down the stairs.

“Morning Cole.” She said instead, and he patted her back as she passed him. 

“Morning kiddo.” He said with a smile. “Happy millenia.”

“Thanks.” she said softly, and headed past him down to the ground floor. The two other humans that lodged there were already sitting at the huge dining table, munching down on their meal, both just come back from their shifts. She sat down, tapped out her breakfast order on the table console, and it coughed out confetti.

“Happy anniversary Ithaca!” Beeped the machine, and applause flooded in from the hallway as the others came down to join her at the table. She laughed, as people handed her cards and small gifts, a dozen different races all gathered together to celebrate her.

In this quarter of Great York, one of the larger cities in the Earth district, there were some two thousand species represented. Some only a few, some in their hundreds, but humans still made up a full fifty percent of the ten million person population. It wasn’t the highest human population, that still went to Roma, some fifty thousand miles northwards. And every other species had their own cities, their own great centres where their populations came from, each with a name that basically meant ‘home’ when they had thought themselves the only inhabitants of the almost unfathomable surface of Botarin. Almost every race called some part of the Surface World home, others living in the long dark caves beneath and between cities, under mountains, or beneath the vast seas.

That was how it was, and always had been. 

Or, was it? There were people, The Before, who were convinced that there had been something before Botarin, before the vast concave surface encircling the Sun that gave warmth to everything on the surface and made life possible, that argued that there had to be more to existence than this one vast uninterrupted surface, the deep caverns, the bountiful oceans or even the vast patches of shade that moved endlessly between the Sun and the surface world, creating day and night.

She glanced at the wrist watch on her arm every few minutes as she waited her turn to take a pod down to her job in the city centre. Twelve numbers, not ten like some, or the full thirty like others, just twelve. Could this really be some kind of Before plant to throw a spanner in how people viewed the world?

“Not even a proper fraction of a day.” She said to Oldra. The two human women always took the tube to work with, despite living in separate block housing. Oldra looked over and nodded.

“What kinda madman would spit it up like that?” She asked, as the cue shuffled forwards towards the transit tube.

Ithaca shrugged. “I dunno. Fake fossil maybe? Or something like that. It’s got a name on it, see here?” she lifted her wrist. “Rolex mean anything to you?”

Oldra shook her head as she looked at the jewellry on her friend’s wrist “I’ve never heard an argument from a Before that held any water. Making a watch that doesn’t work would be about that kind of brilliant idea.” Then she looked up. “What the hell is the commotion up front?”

The crowd of people started to move back, muttering coming from somewhere up ahead. Then there were gasps of shock, and the crowd parted a bit more.

The thud of heavy footfalls had been drowned out until the crowd parted, but when it did, she could see what the fuss was about. “Is that, an Orticori?” She heard someone ask, and she knew why the confusion.

Of all the sapient races that lived on the Surface World, none were as few in number as the Orticori. Some said that there were never more than ten thousand alive at any one time. Others said that they were once the dominant race of Botarin, until the other sapient races allied themselves hundreds of millions of days ago and drove them to the edge of extinction that they’d never been able to recover from.

The last theory was never said in the presence of an Orticori. At almost eight foot tall, clad in armour from head to toe at all times, and carrying at least one visible weapon, no-one picked a fight with one, or even said anything to upset one.

“Look at his armour!” said Oldra as the huge figure walked past, its cloak billowing slightly with each footstep. “Are those blade scratches?”

“I’m more interested in the number on his collar.” Ithaca said softly under her breath. “I think, if I read it right, he’s over two million days old!”

Oldra blew her cheeks out softly. “And we’re lucky to hit forty thousand.” She said, as the towering figure reached a junction some way away. Ithaca could see the head turn, and felt her breath catch in her throat.

From the two other intersecting roads, two more Orticori appeared. A lithe figure with a spear, and a towering one carrying a shield and sheathed sword across its back.

“Are you kidding me?” Someone said loudly. “Male, unis and female Orticori, in the same place?” Ithaca knew that they were one of the species with a triple gender, only slightly less common than the human binary requirement, but the fact that there was more than one of the rarest sapients in Botarin before her drove that from her mind all together.

The three seemed to be talking together, but their tone was so low, and they were so far away that Ithaca couldn’t hear them. After a few minutes though, they turned and continued out of the station, into the rest of the city. As soon as they were out of sight, people started to move back into the cues for the transit system

“It’s weird how open with weapons they are.” Said Oldra, as the two squeezed into a seat between two hefty Drona, fishing out her tablet. “Yeah look, all over the local news feed.” she said, showing the screen to Ithaca.

Ithaca didn’t look up. She was turning the watch around and around on her wrist, starting to feel very nervous. “You ever feel like, something’s seriously not right?” she asked as the pod shot through from the suburbs to the city centre. “Like, there’s something glaringly obviously wrong, but you can’t put your finger on it.”

Oldra shrugged. “I’ll bet people have been feeling like that since the dawn of time, since the first creatures crawled out of the muck and started putting twigs into piles to sleep under.” Ithaca could do nothing but nod, and twist her watch strap, turning it over and glancing down at the back plate. There was another name there.

“I wonder what Yovan means.” She said softly to herself.