Although no one witnessed it, Kerloran smiled.
All over Satamia Star Station, groups of students, come to witness the Great Transformation, bounced, flapped, or swung from tree branches with excitement. Birds hugged reptiles, ursines embraced equines, cats rolled and laughed with monkeys as the tension and gloom was suddenly lifted.
The briefing team emerged from the conference room where they had been hiding.
Silmula Sorafax sat on the third balcony overlooking the main hall, her eyes sparkling with new knowledge and wisdom about how the mysterious universe worked.
At an asteroid mining camp, Ilika and Kibi were helping to load canisters onto pallets. The strong ursine could carry four at a time. Ilika managed two.
Kibi cradled one in her arms and called it good.
A large spider came bustling out of the control room, mandibles twitching and eight feet tapping on the floor with excitement. He stood right in Kibi’s path.
Knowing something was up, Kibi set down her canister.
With gleams in his dozens of eyes, the spider shoved a knowledge pad into Kibi’s hands.
After reading the first few words, Kibi’s face lit up with a huge smile. She started bouncing and nearly hit the ceiling in the quarter-gravity cargo room.
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As soon as she landed, Ilika was quickly at her side, reading over her shoulder. He looked up at the spider. “Are we the last ones in Satamia to find out?”
The spider’s mandibles twitched again. “Probably.”
On one of the four golden boxes in the medical center of Satamia Star Station, a symbol changed from yellow to green, and the top slowly opened.
Healer Dakalio walked over and reminded Boro to move very slowly, as his body had not had any exercise for several Satamia days.
Boro felt for the bleeding holes in his belly and side, and was delighted to not find them.
When the young engineer felt ready, the older healer helped him to slowly sit up, then carefully stand. Boro held onto things as he made his way into a shower, then slipped on clean clothes. By then, he was ready to stand on his own.
He grabbed a nutrition drink on his way through the main hall, but was soon at his destination — a certain observation window in the dimly-lit tunnel that wound through the simulated desert environment.
Mammals, birds, large insects, and many others he couldn’t name — all gathered around to watch the drama within — quickly recognized him and made a space.
Deep Learning Notes
Some religions have imagined future worlds in which “birds hugged reptiles, ursines embraced equines, cats rolled and laughed with monkeys,” and other utopian images. Their mistake, in the author’s opinion, is that they imagine this happening on Earth, with the people and animals that currently exist on Earth. The Nebador stories do not propose that this is possible. (Indeed, it is a common theme in most religions, including Christianity, that the “path” to
“Heaven” is “narrow” and so, by implication, hard to find and difficult to follow.)
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Advanced students: What “new knowledge and wisdom” do you think Silmula Sorafax was contemplating as she pondered the completion of the Great Transformation?