Book of Glitch - Chapter 10

Professor Reginald was at the forefront of variant communication studies and anytime Joshua had come to see him, he had the deep pleasure of watching as the professor’s experiments brought him closer to deciphering the brainwaves the Incantare use in order to telepathically speak to one another. Next to the teleboard, the professor had posted several pictures with him and his gorilla companion, Maximus.

Joshua noted that Reginald had added a picture of Maximus as a young ape, he supposed no more than three months of age on the Incantare scale, and dragged it over to the teleboard to enhance its dimensions. He smirked as he saw a young male Cerebra bottle-feeding a fussy, hairy/furry, large-cranium, infant Maximus.

As he dragged a second picture over the teleboard’s surface and chuckled at the sight of a slightly older Maximus levitating one of the professor’s tomes over the older Cerebra’s ginormous scalp, the door had opened behind him. Joshua spun around grinning, only to snap his lips shut with a surprising force.

“Oh! Hello, Elder Joshua,” Syena greeted him. “I hadn’t expected…Has Professor Reginald returned yet?”

A bit crest-fallen at her formality and apparent disinterest in meeting him there, Joshua shook his head.

“I see. I came to return his codex,” she explained as she raised the heavy volume up to her cheek. “I was hoping I might be able to ask him about some of the material I am still struggling to grasp, but I suppose I’ll have to come back later.”

As she began her retreat toward the door, Joshua spoke up.

“Perhaps I may be of some help,” he almost shouted. At seeing her wide-eyed expression, he lowered his voice. “I mean to say that I spend a great deal of time with the professor, and I’ve read all of the material he stores here. What are you having trouble with?”

Syena study him with a somewhat doubtful look. At the time, he supposed it was strange for her to have someone who looked only a few years older than herself, address her as though she were a child. Based on her appearance, Joshua had estimated that Syena was about fifty years old, which made him twelve-hundred years her senior in the Incantare age. He then began to panic that she would only regard him as an old man seeing as she had already addressed him so formally.

“Well thank you, Elder…”

“Please,” he interrupted. “Feel free to call me Joshua.”

She smiled and continued, “Thank you, Joshua. I don’t have a great number of questions. I simply need a few points that I read explained a bit further.”

He nodded and returned her smile, though his was more in celebration of retaining Syena’s company.

“What would you like to know first?” he asked.

Syena approached the table Joshua had been sitting at and withdrew one of the professor’s massive volumes. As she stood across from him, she opened the codex and turned through the worn pages until she came to a mark she had evidently made next to a heading entitled The Reproductive Practices and Processes of the Variant Race. Joshua’s eyebrows rose to meet his hairline, but he lowered them just as Syena looked back toward him.

“Now Eld- I mean Joshua, I read this section in hopes of better understanding how inter-variant pairings are able to successfully reproduce.”

At that moment, Joshua thought his composure might falter since he had not so much as thought about the topic in centuries. He feared that his inability to expand on the subject might come across as a lack of knowledge or, worse yet, slightly immature. As Syena’s gaze fell on him once again, he nodded for her to continue.

She went on, “However, I still find I’m having trouble understanding the conception of Minor children between Elders and their Shaman companions.”

Joshua inwardly sighed with relief and smiled. He rose from his seat and stepped around the table to stand closer to Syena, without standing directly next to her, and explained the matter in detail.

“Yes, that is one of the greater mysteries most Incantare and Elders struggled to understand when Shamans were first discovered,” he explained.

He suppressed a smirk as he noticed that Syena was in deep concentration of every word he spoke.

“Best I start with the basics, yes?”

She grinned and answered with a small nod.

“As you may already know,” he began, “Elders age at a rate of about fifty Incantare years at a time, and this is due to our hearts’ beating at an average rate of once every hour. Therefore, it is impossible for our female counterparts to conceive as their hearts are simply not strong enough to fuel the life of the child and its mother. Actually, it is my understanding that reproductive activity used to be exceptionally risky for either Elder sex prior to the involvement of Shamans.”

There Joshua glanced toward Syena to see whether she had caught his subtle hint at not having personal knowledge of relations with Shamans. She seemed to be considering a point he had made.

“But how could it have been risky?” she asked. “Abraham had always told us that it had taken him discovering the first Shaman to stop him from his escapades, how did he manage it without harming himself?”

Joshua nodded and was again relieved that Syena had missed an opportunity to make him feel foolish.

“Yes, well you should keep in mind that Abraham may have still been undergoing the transformation from the glitch outbreak at that time,” he said. “After all, it was less than a century after the disease spread that the Shaman trials took place, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Since you already know the story of how Abraham learned of that final variant race, and how they can use their enthrall to manipulate the hearts of Elders, I will continue our discussion from there.

“As I had mentioned, for many years Elders were incapable of physically engaging one another or any other Incantare for that matter until the discovery of Shamans. Their ability to increase an Elder’s heart rate to a pace fast enough for activity, then slow it before any harm was done. Soon Sham females found themselves with child, while our lady Elders were still incapable of siring offspring, though a few died trying. It is the understanding of many Cerebra obstetric researchers that the strength of the Shaman heart is what enables them to successfully bring forth the Minor children. With their mothers’ strong hearts they are able to age at a faster rate of twenty-five Incantare years at a time, but it suspected that this is what causes their shortened overall lifetimes.”

As he concluded his explanation, Joshua looked over to Syena to see that she was searching over the codex with her brows furrowed while she nibbled her lip. She seemed to only notice that he was staring at her upon hearing the silence of the lab room.

“I’m relieved that you know so much about the process, seeing as you’re a very young Elder yourself,” she smiled.

He did not keep himself from grinning at this observation.

“I’m glad you think so,” he answered before realizing what she meaning she might find in his remark. He corrected himself, “I mean to say that I’m glad I could assist in your understanding, it’s been quite a while since I read about the subject myself.”

“Yes you are very knowledgeable, Joshua,” she said. “I only wish I could return your kindness.”

Joshua began to shake his head vigorously as he saw a small frown playing at the corners of Syena’s lips.

“But you could educate me, Syena,” he said. “It’s only that- Well it’s such a sensitive matter, and I can’t be sure you would…”

He realized that he might only challenge her intelligence in continuing and chose instead to silence himself.

“No please, if there is something you would like to know that you think I might be able to inform you of I’d be thrilled to discuss it,” she said.

In seeing the gleeful expression in her eyes, he determined it better to demean himself if only to keep from injuring her pride. He considered for a moment what she knowledge she might possess that he was not privy to.

“The thing is, Syena,” he began. “I’ve been curious for some time now about the passing of a Stonie. I mean to ask, what happens to you all when, you know? I have heard of the crystallization from Abraham once, but he was too weepy to offer me any better explanation. Would you mind terribly?”

At this he feared she might become so upset that she would storm from the lab, and he might never see her again. Instead, a thoughtful look came to her face as she folded her hands together and brought them up to meet her lips.

“Not at all, Eld- Joshua,” she corrected herself. “That is a fine excellent question, which I happen to know of firsthand since I attended that very same crystallizing with my family and Abraham twelve years ago.”

As she spoke, Syena reached down to her neck and felt at the gemstone hanging about it.

“As an Elder you know of my grandfather Gabbro, yes?”

Joshua nodded in agreement.

“Stonies also age rather slowly compared to the Incantare variants. And since we live on plasma alone, our bodies simply begin to dry up as they become less capable of absorbing the necessary nutrients from the liquid. Thus, the dying Stonie becomes very brittle while also stiffening until his own organs become so dense that he is more of a statue than he is living.”

Syena had stopped to look down at her necklace again, and Joshua noticed that her face was twisted as though something had irritated her eye. She took a sharp breath and looked back at him with a small smile.

“It was his wife, my grandmother Quartney who passed away, but her health had been failing for quite some time before that,” she explained. “At first I couldn’t understand why she was gone, or what that meant for the rest of my family. But afterward, my grandfather read me a letter from her saying that I would always have her with me and he placed this stone around my neck.”

Joshua returned her smile and was glad to have allowed her the chance to teach him something as well, but he wished he had thought of a more pleasant topic.

The Great Bell rang outside the window, signaling the passing of another hour. Syena ran from him to look outside. She glanced back at him beaming before staring out again at the clock tower.

“Oh what good luck,” Syena shouted. “Would you believe today’s my hatch-day?”

“I’m sorry, what?” said Joshua.

“It’s my hatch-day, today,” she repeated as the bell continued to toll.

This time Joshua heard her and an idea leapt to his mind. He wanted for the gong of the clock tower to cease before putting his plan into effect.

“If I heard you correctly, did you say that it is now your hatch-day, today?” he asked.

Syena nodded still grinning, and he smiled as he prepared to take a chance.

“And if I’m not mistaken, it is customary to congratulate a Stonie on their successful hatching,” he explained. “May I offer you my congratulations, Syena?”

Again she nodded, although her smile was meeker and her eyes seemed more solemn than they had been that evening.

Joshua stepped closer to Syena, closing the remaining space between them. Two days ago he would never have dreamed of so much as entering a polite conversation with another Stonie, only to find himself on the brink of bestowing a hatch-day kiss on one of them. And what a lovely one he thought she was. He looked down at her face and reached his hand out to cup her cheek. He was shocked at how soft her skin felt beneath his fingers—he had expected a hard, rough surface not the sensation of smooth marble that was malleable like clay.

He leaned over her a bit more as she lifted her face to meet his, the hairs on his neck prickled as he imagined his uncle catching sight of his noble nephew embracing one of the lowly Stonies. No, Syena was the furthest thing from low he argued to himself. She was everything he could not be. Strong, brave, never backing down in the face of any dangers—Joshua considered himself to be the lowly, frail Elder wrapped in the arms of her firm yet gentle hold.

As he drew closer to him, Joshua could feel her breath on his lips. It was surprisingly cool, or he wondered if the room was all of a sudden too hot.

“Happy hatch-day, Syena,” he whispered.

His lips lowered to seal the gap, but before they met hers a loud crack sounded through the air as though lightening had struck. Then Joshua felt himself sailing through the cold night air of London, looking back up at a whole in the side of the south Cerebran Tower where he and Syena had just been standing.