Chapter 17: Mikal

When did I become aware?

I’ve often pondered this. I knew I spent time in the big tank, Tory said it was nine months. It didn’t seem that long. Although I do have memories of being in the smaller bladder. I have memories of Tory worrying about me.

I know that when they removed the umbilical cord, it didn’t hurt. I don’t even have a mark from where it had been attached to me. I remember being released into the big tank after what I consider my birth. I liked swimming in the big tank and the feel of the fluids moving around me. Tory said I shouldn’t have memories of this time, but I do.

I know my carers, Cee and Dee, kept a watchful eye on me. I also felt that they had a vested interest in me, but it wasn’t until I was released from the growing tank that I fully understood the role they were to play in my life.

What did I learn?

This is an interesting question. I have a feeling it was a lot more than Tory meant me to learn. You see I don’t think Tory knows that I was and am still able to, tap into her systems. I’d been doing it since before my release. I remember thinking that the information she was giving me was disjointed, so I went looking for more.

Tory said I grew far quicker than I should have. I think it had to do with me knowing how my body worked and that I could control my growth. I also understood why I was in the growth tank. I’d found her files on Sarah.

I had a lot of fun when I learned how to access the shape changing ability. The mermaid’s tail was great fun since I was living in liquid. I was even able to alter how I absorbed the nutrients and oxygen my body needed from it more efficiently, so I grew faster.

It was a bit of a shock to my system when they removed me from the tank. I had to alter my lungs, so I breathed air. I’d viewed many of Tory’s archived vids to understand the mechanics of walking, and once I worked out the mechanics of it, I had little trouble adapting.

One of my most interesting memories of that time was when they first fed me. Hunger was a new sensation. Dee was a skilful cook, and I thought of her as my mum. She made me a simple vegetable soup to start with.

The explosion of tastes in my mouth was wonderful. For my next meal, she added soft bread so I could learn to chew. After that, I tried everything she would let me. I liked eating the different foods just for the textures and flavours.

I already knew how to identify plants that were poisonous to me, so I made sure I didn’t eat them, but everything else was fair game. I got in trouble the day I found the vegetable garden. Dee gave me my first gardening lesson, and after that, I loved spending time in the garden helping him.

This may seem strange, but I loved digging in the garden more than nurturing the plants although I could do that too. Garden loam is very interesting stuff. I found mud fascinating. I also learned that not all mud was equal. This was when the data about different elements that make up our world was accessed as part of my learning.

I still had a lot of disjointed information in my system. As I learnt something new, I was able to make links to other information, and it would now start to make sense to me. Tory, Dee and Cee would probably tell you that I asked a gazillion questions.

Well! How else could I make sense of what was simply data and what was knowledge? I had access to a lot of information, but that didn’t mean that I understood it. I also determined that this was part of Tory’s and the zoetics problems.

Second-hand data is not as effective as learning it yourself. So I decided that as I learned something, I would share it and my thoughts with them. It took me many years to explain those fundamental differences to my parents.

I loved having debates with them. Tory was especially good fun to chat to about what I had learned. She had the better capacity to debate with me than Dee and Cee, but I still loved them. They had a special role in my life, and I often talked to them about the issues of raising kids. Most other topics I kept for Tory.

I had learnt that raising us kids was the zoetics prime objective. It didn’t seem odd to me at the time to teach my parents how to be good parents. We would often have discussions with the other zoetics and the faeries. They helped me enormously as well.

Aee and Bee, Eee and Eff, Gee and Hatch, and Iee and Jay were to be the carers of the next four children to be born. I found it fascinating to watch the eggs grow into little people. When two of the eggs split, and we determined I would get six new siblings, we were all excited.

I don’t think Tory was aware, but I also changed her download files to the kids and added material that I had found missing and changed the order of her downloads so they would assist their learning abilities.

I also made the zoetics who were to be their parents, read and tell stories to the kids that had been assigned to them. I explained that this was the best way for the kids to identify and bond with them as their parents.

I also liked reading to them. Tory had a pad that I could use to access stories so I could read them aloud, and I got the zoetics to do the same. We had them in our memories, but I found that reading the words and using how they had been set on the page gave the stories better perspective and I could vary my emotions to match.

The androids had found lots of pads and even odd books that seemed to have a lot more pages than they actually displayed, in the old sections of the ship, and they brought them back to our cavern. Many of the books were, in fact, the personal diaries of our ancestors, and they hadn’t been scanned into Torus’ system. I found reading the stories in the books a totally fascinating way to learn.

Tory said the books also contained information she was missing with regards to how the different Keltrian races raised their children. She wished she had gotten them scanned into her system a long time before.

At first, the zoetics humoured me and did the duty of reading to the babies. However, after a while, they too realised the babies that were assigned to them were responding to them talking to them. I noticed the change in them as well. They started to care about the kids. It wasn’t just a duty as it had been in the past.

When I was three months short of being seven, I assisted with the removal of the kids from the tank. I had Tory bring the two single girls out first and insisted on two days between each of the liberations. This gave us time to get them on their feet, fed, and settled into their new rooms.

The first girl was to be Aee and Bee’s kid. She was called Able. She had dark green eyes, pale green hair, green/grey skin and she was slim like me. She was 5cm shorter than I had been when awakened. She was the tallest of the girls. I thought she was cute and she always loved to hear my stories. She liked changing into a mermaid.

Once she got her breathing settled, she smiled at Aee and Bee and took both their hands. If zoetics could have smiled, I bet they would have been. They only had painted on smiles. It was a project I would have to have Tory look into I decided.

They even fussed over her and told her how happy they were to be her parents. I think Tory was as pleased as I was with the way they had bonded. It did take Able a couple of days to learn to talk properly, but once I got her to sound the basic words out, she was off and running.

The second girl was called Effie. Eee and Eff were to be her parents. She had pale golden blonde hair with red streaks. Effie had dark blue eyes and was a little shorter and stockier than Able. She liked to change to catalo. She was a little more self-assured than Able who needed a little more TLC.

Gee and Hatch, were getting the first set of twins. We decided on Gale and Hail for their names. We removed them at the same time and laid them, so they saw each other when they opened their eyes. This seemed to keep them calmer while they adapted to living in the air.

They had a darker peach coloured skin compared to Effie’s and my creamy colour. Their hair was dark blonde with a pinkish tinge. Their eyes were a paler purple and larger, more like the Genteli race. They liked wolf as their main form to change into. They were of similar height and build to Effie.

Iee and Jae got the last set of twins. We called them Isa and Jina. They had a more brown tone to their skin, but it wasn’t as dark as some of the people that I had seen in the vids. They had narrower eyes and higher cheekbones than the rest of us. They had the darkest hair, and it was a rich auburn.

Their eyes were interesting in that they had a dark blue ring around golden brown irises. They were the shortest of us at only 114cm. I was 122cm at liberation and had already reached 150cm at the time of their birth. Tory believed I was going to be over 2m by the time I finished growing.

Isa and Jina liked to change to Baboos the most. I had learnt that they were a form of primate that was found on Keltria and looked similar to the animals in the Earth files called orangutans. They too knew who their parents were and they were happy to finally be able to hug them.

This set of girls loved hugs and holding your hand. They also seemed to know when the others needed a hug or just a gentle touch. Just a smile from them made you feel good so the other sisters liked being in their company.

We all helped the girls to settle in. Tory had designed what she called T-shirts and shorts for us to wear. They were loose, comfortable and simple to wear. I liked them anyway. She didn’t have a problem with us being naked but even the faeries wore loose clothing, and all her vids showed humans wearing some form of clothing in public.

Even though the zoetics didn’t really need clothes, I had Cee make them all clothes like those that they had for me. Except I got her to print the letter of the alphabet that corresponded to their names on the little pocket on the shirts.

They did all look alike after all except for the crooked smiles I had given them. We even found an item that was called a baseball cap in the replicator, and we put their letter on them as well. The amusing thing was they each picked a different set of colours, and their clothes were always that combination.

When I had told them, I wanted the children to know their voices, they had even studied different voice patterns, and each affected their own voice. It made it a lot easier to know with whom you were talking.

Since they were to be our surrogate parents, I told them, in all of my naivety, that they had to have boy and girl voices and decide who was to be the daddy and who was to be the mummy as David’s vids showed kids having one of each. The zoetics did do as I asked.

We even redesigned the rooms in the caverns, so the zoetics had a room beside their kids. Admittedly, they didn’t need to lay down to rest while they recharged but it looked like they rested as I did, so it made me happy.

When we explained the room setups to the girls, they also found it comforting to know their assigned parents slept near them. We may have had a tonne of knowledge in our bones, but we were still children in that we had no real social experiences.

One of the most interesting things we learnt to do was how to play. I had mentioned to Tory that the kids in the vids I had accessed seemed to use play as an interesting way to learn about the people they lived and socialised with. It was how they learnt to adopt the accepted behaviours of their societies. The faeries had also agreed with my assessment.

Freya was good at coming up with games we could adapt. Faeries loved to play, and she felt it was an important part of learning. I think she also had a lot of influence on me as far as establishing what was right and what was wrong.

Tory said that faeries were very family orientated and since we were families and a community, I had little trouble accepting many of Freya’s and her people’s teachings. It seemed right to me and made me feel a part of my new and growing family.

The girls were each assigned a faerie, and we designed little houses for them in our rooms. It was a great project and taught us a lot. Able was the best at designing interesting structures.

Before the other kids were born, Tory, Freya, the zoetics and I had several discussions on what were acceptable behaviours and the rules of our societies. Freya, Annity and I pointed out lots of holes in their ideas.

We looked at different societies, and Tory informed me that my genetic father wasn’t the same as the girls since he was from Earth. They had Grandteli fathers and Shape Shifters as their mothers, so we looked at these three societies in particular.

We decided to start with that we would keep it simple. I thought the rule, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do to you’, was a nice place to start and was one of the faeries base rules of behaviour.

I realised as I grew older this rule wasn’t as simple as it seemed. We all had different personalities. Some of us were more sensitive to the needs of others and some less so. One thing we did agree on was that deliberately harming others wasn’t to be tolerated.

We didn’t, however, want a lot of different punishments, as this in itself could be harmful. We decided that while we were still little kids, the first method of control was making the offender aware that their conduct wasn’t how they should behave, and of the hurt, they had caused. Time out for reflection would be the second.

Freya and Tory did warn me that exclusion on a long term basis could lead to other bad behaviour. We all agreed we would monitor and discuss what we felt was bad behaviour and as a group, we would determine the punishment depending on the circumstances of the offence. If in doubt Tory would be the adjudicator as she had the knowledge of the different societies we originated from.

So that is what we did.

I loved my sisters.

By the time I turned fifteen, I had twenty-four sisters. My siblings spent most of their time in their female form when human. I was the one oddity in this respect. For whatever reason, I felt more comfortable as a male. Unlike them, if I went to sleep as a male, I woke as one.

Dee and Cee adopted one of the sets of twins from the third group that were liberated when I was eleven. The parents of the first group added one each from the fourth gestation and two of the parents of the second groups got the last four kids to be born from that hatching.

We called the sisters in my family group Dory and Cory. I had a lot of fun teaching them how to be kids. My little sisters were a lot of fun. While technically I was only six years older than they were, I felt a lot older than that.

Since we were kids, Tory, the faeries and the zoetics had devised a certain amount of structure into our days. The faeries, for reasons only known to them, had taken for more interest in us than they had the previous experiments. We had a bedtime and a time we were to get up. We had moderately specific meal times, time for play and school time.

Since we already had a lot of information in our systems most of our school time was spent doing experiments. We explored what we liked to do and what we were good at doing. Tory wanted us to try a lot of different things first to learn our strengths and then our weaknesses.

She had told us that she didn’t want us to dedicate our learning to one or two specific areas until we were at least fifteen. We had plenty of time to grow up. For most of us, this wasn’t a hard endeavour, as we had a lot of fun exploring.

If there was one thing we all had in common, it was that we loved learning new things, especially about the world we lived in, what we could do, and best of all, ourselves. Many of us had shown indications, from an early age, as to what interested us more than other things did. While I liked earthy things, I also took an interest in a wide variety of activities.

Tory, the zoetics and I were constantly evolving our new society. In other words, we were making up the rules as we went along. We seemed more emotional than the faeries and seemed to need more hard and fast rules.

Interestingly only the first group of girls got fairies. Annity never did explain why other than that was all we needed. They also got fairies that were expected to become mated pairs.

One day, not long after I turned fifteen, I asked Tory why she had involved me so heavily in the process of developing our community. I was in reality still just a kid myself.

I was surprised when she told me it was because I had an innate sense of right and wrong. I had always displayed more concern for the welfare of those around me than myself. I was a born leader, and I lead by example.

She said that these were considered good qualities to have in any of the societies she had information about, and the faeries had agreed with her assessment. That gave me a lot to think about.

I was supposed to be thinking about my specialisations for my studies. This I considered the hardest decision I had ever had to make. When I asked Tory for her advice, she chuckled and said, “Just keep doing what you are doing.”

This also confused me. I told Tory that I wasn’t really doing any one thing, as I dabbled in lots of areas.

She just chuckled again and said, “Yes, but you do them all so well.”

A couple of months later, I lay in my bed pondering on what I was going to choose for my speciality.

I still hadn’t picked one. I gave up trying to sleep and decided on a run in the forests instead. As I walked past the rooms, I checked on the girls. I’d done it earlier, but I didn’t seem to sleep as long as they did. I had always put it down to me being older.

When I got to one of the rooms, I heard quite sobbing. We rarely shut our doors. I quietly entered the room and found one of the youngest of our kids. I sat on her bed, and she crawled into my arms. I just rocked her and sang a song.

I liked to sing to them or tell a story when they were having trouble sleeping. She had dropped into a peaceful sleep before I finished. I gently tucked her in and wandered off again. I went and got a glass of milk and found myself sitting on my stool beside Tory’s tank.

I heard her chuckle and then say, “So have you worked out what it is you do best?”

I shook my head in the negative. “Mikal what did you do before you came to see me?” she asked me gently.

I had noticed that Tory now displayed a lot more different emotions than when I first came out of my tank. I frowned at her question. “I got a glass of milk,” I said.

Tory chuckled, “What did you do before that?”

I felt my brow wrinkle as I frowned harder. I then said, “Ola was restless. She is still adjusting, so I helped her go to sleep.”

Then she asked me again, “So what is it that you do best?”

I was confused. My mind didn’t associate my actions before I got here with anything that I did that was special. If one of the girls was upset, I often got up to them. It didn’t seem to matter where their room was in relation to mine. I just always seemed to know when they needed someone to be with them.

I stared at the being in the tank. I had always thought that Tory was beautiful. I loved watching the liquid flow through her living towers. She was a lovely coral orange, and the tops of her towers were a florescent pink fluff of tiny tendrils that she used to absorb the nutrients she needed.

She had told me once that my genetic father had described her kind as looking like sea sponges that come from Earth, his home planet. I’d seen pictures of these creatures, but I still thought Tory was much more beautiful. She had this sparkle about her. She pulsed with life.

I found myself putting my hand in the tank and gently stroking one of her towers. They did have a spongy sort of flesh on the outside, but I knew inside was a very hard structure. It was her data storage skeleton as she called it.