Chapter 6

When Estron was satisfied that Margaret was progressing as expected, she and I were given an apartment of our own that didn't open into the regeneration lab. Actually we were offered separate apartments but owing to our sexual reawakening, neither of us had any interest at all in that arrangement.

For the next several months, nearly all our days were filled. From early in the morning until evening, we were in some form of training; Margaret spending at least an hour a day in physical conditioning and rest learning to speak Common and studying the history of the multiverse. She progressed so well with the language that within four months of her emergence from the tank, we were conversing almost entirely in Common, only reverting to English when we both hit the same snag. She and Hex were rapidly becoming best buds and spent a lot of time together and that quickly boosted her fluency.

Following the introductory course, my days began with two hours of 'Regeneration Theory' under Mr. Rummpumm's tutelage. The rest of the day was now spent with Estron learning how to scan new clients, how to determine their optimum genetic configurations and then prepare the stem cell and nanobot injections to initiate the process.

Every step of regeneration was absolutely fascinating to the point that Estron had to practically kick me out of the lab at the end of the day. Had there even been a clock to watch, I'd never have known it. Identifying, isolating and then manipulating blocks of genes to produce a particular physical characteristic could be tedious, but observing as the end products of our efforts began to manifest in the patient's anatomy was an amazing thing to see, especially considering the impact this technology was going to have on the human race; no cancer risk, no more Down's syndrome babies, no chemically induced malformations, no mental aberrancies or retardation. Of course, seeing the intellectual and emotionally impact of our efforts had to wait until the regeneration was completed, memory was restored and the patient was fully functional again. According to Estron, on rare occasions, behavioral glitches or personality quirks showed up after the patient emerged from the tank but those anomalies never manifested as anything that couldn't be corrected with a little specialized genetic intervention.

Every time I thought about it, I knew that I had fallen into the most rewarding career ever. What amazed me as much as the value of the work itself was the fact that I was capable of doing it. Without the enhanced learning capacity, I seriously doubt I'd ever have been able to grasp the complexity of what we were doing.

Exactly what Margaret and I were going to be doing with our new knowledge wasn't clear as yet. I mean, yes, we understood that we'd be serving in some sort of ambassadorial capacity, at least initially, but exactly what we'd be doing and how we'd be doing it was still somewhat of a mystery. Every time we tried to pin Hex down on the details, she put us off with comments like 'Just concentrate on your training for now. We'll be tackling strategy after you've mastered your arts.'

It wasn't long before Margaret's exercise program brought her up to peak physical condition. Having spent so many years debilitated and in pain, she went after it with a vengeance.

There came a day toward the end of Margaret's first year and the end of my second year living on Earth's sister planet, Surrilla, when we were shown to a large meeting room somewhere near the top of the building to begin laying out exactly what was needed to bring our home world into the multiverse community. The view out the transparent wall was breathtaking.

Seated around a large oval table were six others, three we knew and three we didn't: Hex, Estron, Rummpumm, two others representing the Hawnai, Estron's people and the Ohndahl, Hex's species plus one we hadn't encountered before.

I can't accurately describe what the stranger looked like because he or she was completely encased in some king of self-contained suit that revealed nothing but it's eyes, a very deep, almost luminous green. It carried a small canister on it's back, probably some sort of breathing apparatus judging from the periodic hissing noise it emitted every few seconds. As it walked briskly into the room, we could see it was short, not much more than a meter tall. It was bipedal and had oddly shaped hands. They were gloved and appeared to be thick, elongated pads with four opposing digits on either side, generally modeled after a Venus flytrap leaf. It took a seat in an oddly designed chair and was immediately elevated to eye level with the rest of us.

When we were all seated, Estron nodded to Hex and, speaking in Common, asked, "Will you do the introductions, please?"

Hex stood and walked around the table laying her hands on each individual. "My name is Hexitor and I am an assimilation specialist. This is Margaret Ames, trained in social psychology. Brent Baum was a retired legal representative on his home world and is now in training to be a regeneration technician. Estron Shakor, regeneration specialist and professor of life sciences. Rummpumm, professor of life sciences. Calistor Empor, professor of trans-dimensional physics. Loxitor, one of my clan is tasked with the initial exploration and assessment of newly discovered worlds. Finally, Uki-uki-sunni, representative of the Central Council."

Estron nodded to Uki-uki-sunni, apparently handing over chair of the meeting. The diminutive representative sat up straight and began speaking Common with a soft, pleasing voice. It was completely illogical but, based on that alone, I decided to think of it as a she. I learned later that neither he nor she would have been strictly correct but that she would suffice.

"On behalf of the Central Council, I welcome the two representatives from the candidate world known as Earth. From all reports, Hexitor has made a wise choice in your selection. We thank you for the effort you are putting into you preparations. We appreciate that the Common speech is new to you so please ask for clarification of anything said in this meeting that is unclear.

"The purpose of this gathering is to explain to you the general conditions under which Earth will be offered membership and a seat on our Council. We are particularly interested in Margaret's recommendations regarding our initial approach to the identification of those people on your world who would prove most efficacious in introducing Earth's population to the concept of a multiverse. I will briefly outline the general requirements Earth must meet to gain membership but we will not discuss the relative merits of those requirements at this meeting. Rather, I will ask Margaret and Brent to consider them carefully for future discussions.

"I'm certain you can appreciate why we cannot simply throw open the doors to advanced technology such as ours without considerable groundwork. To provide some background for our discussion, I will ask Loxitor to give us a brief summation of her initial exploration of Earth many years ago."

To my untrained eyes, Loxitor was almost a double for Hex except for having more brown in her eyes and a slightly stockier build. She held a small screen in her hand and read from notes: "This new world was first discovered just over forty-three Earth years ago. I spent several months learning two of their many languages, Spanish and English, from watching and listening to various media. Because I am much taller than the average human female, the hologram I created as a disguise was of an elderly human male.

"I traveled and lived among humans for several years. The details of my findings are a matter of record but in brief, I found the human population to be at a developmental cusp we have seen often. They are advancing much more quickly in the sciences than in socio-political areas. Ideologically, they are quite fragmented and often at war with each other. Institutionalized belief systems called religions have been primarily responsible for their inability to find common ground.