Young Writers Society

Verona paused outside the door to Nyra’s quarters, hand raised, but hesitating to knock on the light, plain wood door. The idea of private lessons with the brusque woman was intimidating. She took a deep breath and rapped on the door twice.

It opened almost immediately to reveal Nyra’s long, thin face. Her expression was initially guarded, but she relaxed when she saw it was Verona.

“Come on in,” she said, pulling the door wider. “Go ahead and have a seat.”

Verona was surprised to discover that the leader’s quarters were nearly as barren as the dorms she shared with her fellow teammates. The room only held a bed, a desk strewn with papers and personal effects and some storage modules. On the opposite wall, a door led to what looked like a private bathroom. There were no chairs, so after a moment of uncertainty, Verona opted to sit on the floor, crossing her legs.

Nyra joined Verona on the floor, folding her legs under herself. “We’ll be going down to one of the practice rooms soon to join Kyle and Merea, but I wanted to get some theoretical things out of the way first.”

Verona’s brow furrowed. “Don’t they need to learn those things, too? Teacher,” she added hurriedly.

“Merea, perhaps, in time. But she doesn’t need these skills yet. And as for Kyle, well, I doubt he would have the patience for learning them.” Nyra’s lips compressed into a line briefly.

“Of course, you already know about the third Room,” continued Nyra. “Have you worked much in it?”

Guiltily, Verona shook her head. Soon after her initial organizing spree and a few more lessons on it, the mission had failed, everything had upended, and since then she had been too busy to think much about her Library.

Nyra frowned. “But you know that our Leader learned these secrets from the government – and that the government has no intention of revealing them to the public, correct?”

Verona nodded.

“There’s more,” Nyra said. “What the government’s researchers have been discovering and developing is not merely a new Room, as large as the implications of that are. No, they have discovered the underlying foundation of our Powers, requiring a complete rewrite of all the theory and scientific categorization that is currently used to explain what we can do.”

This information took Verona nearly a minute to get her head around it as she tried to decipher what Nyra meant. Did she mean that everything – the classes of powers, the distinction of the Rooms and the science behind teleportation was obsolete? It couldn’t be.

“What could possibly do that?” Verona said, skeptical. “We’ve been studying the Powers ever since we came out of the Dark Times – you can’t tell me that all of a sudden what’s been fact for the better part of a thousand years can just go up in smoke!”

Nyra shook her head. “This isn’t a recent discovery, Verona. Our Leader estimates that the government has understood these principles for two hundred years. And they’ve lied to us all that time. This is the first time anybody outside their top-secret circle has known about any of this, and believe me, they want it kept quiet. They have quite the manhunt on for Leader Eracle. All very hush-hush, of course.”

“Okay,” Verona said, leaning back onto her hands, trying to absorb the information and keep her frustration under control. “Okay. So everything I’ve ever studied about Shaping is wrong. I guess starting over is better late then never. One question, though – why in Nirvana’s name haven’t you told everyone already? If you’re really trying to stop the government’s lies.”

Nyra’s eyes flashed. “You don’t understand what this information could do, you don’t understand the ramifications of leaking it. The only reason the government hasn’t stamped us utterly out is because they don’t know Leader Eracle is with us. It’s not for you to question the Council.”

Verona flushed and lowered her eyes, realizing how insolent she had sounded. “Sorry.”

Nyra’s gaze softened. “It’s an understandable question.”

There was an awkward pause, then Verona cleared her throat and asked, “So, will you teach me the new theory?”

“Yes, that’s why we’re here,” Nyra said. She took a deep breath. “It’s surprisingly simple, really. All of it – the Rooms, the structure – is a coping mechanism for our brains.

“You know, of course, that our powers didn’t exist until almost a thousand years ago. The only mental Power we had was our link with our twins. Shaping, teleporting – none of that existed. Until one day, they did.”

Verona nodded. “There was chaos for years.”

“Humanity didn’t react well,” Nyra admitted. “It didn’t help that times were already rather turbulent, with all the nations fighting with each other.”

Verona had always been a bit baffled by that part in history. So many people had spent so much time fighting and killing each other instead of just working together. Seven billion people under one government was nothing compared to some of the larger colonies. Sure, the old factions were still there – religious or ethnic groups, though the latter had become so intermingled over the years that there was very little to distinguish. But the government served everyone, only subdivided into planets for sheer practicality. After the fifteen billion population mark, it became too difficult for one power structure to serve everybody.

At least, that was how it was supposed to work. But the corrupt had been slowly changing the government structure for decades, opening the door more corruption, until they wound up with the mess they had today.

“But all that doesn’t matter,” Nyra continued. “The point is, as a species, our minds suddenly broadened, our abilities increased. It overturned everything we thought we knew about the universe. Suddenly, we could travel faster than light. We had to cope, somehow, and so we did what humans always do: we categorized. We set boundaries. The three Rooms aren’t separate any more than a tree’s branches are separate. We just divided them for our own convenience.”

Understanding came to Verona in a rush. “Is that why there’s a door to both my other Rooms in my Library? That’s how I did the trick with the gun back in the arena. I ran from my Library to the Room of Shaping, carrying the schematics.”

Nyra looked somewhat taken aback. “Yes, that would be why. I suppose it means you’re already more free-thinking than many people.”

Or just that I actually put effort into my Shaping, Verona thought. So few people think of it as an art. “So, if there’s no boundaries, then what are our powers, really?”

Nyra smiled. “They are, in essence, a result of connection. It’s almost like…. like something clicked and we suddenly had a much better subconscious understanding of and connection to the universe as a whole. Nothing we could ever consciously know, but it gave us the ability to manipulate the very fabric of space, to manipulate matter itself.

“Of course, we didn’t really understand what we were doing, so we categorized it and compartmentalized it, only being able to Shape things in a limited fashion in one room, and teleport in another. We didn’t even realize we could organize our own memories and consciously draw on them to Shape – and even then we see it as just another Room.”

“But surely not everyone saw it the same way at first.” Verona couldn’t accept that every single person’s brain was so similar that they would have all produced exactly the same responses.

“No, no, of course not,” Nyra said. “That’s just the one that gained the most traction over time. Now, everybody has it because everybody thinks they should have it.”

“So you’re saying…. you’re saying we could just Shape anything we wanted, just by looking at it?” Verona said, her brain already racing to think of all the new applications and possibilities. She felt a jolt in her stomach as she realized that the first thing she thought of was that it meant factory workers would be able to produce more things, faster. What would that mean for them?

“No, don’t be ridiculous,” Nyra said. “That would be like being Nirvana Herself. Maybe, one day, but for now even the most advanced of us still need a Room to help us visualize what we’re doing. But our Shaping is a lot more intuitive, more streamlined. It’s almost as if the object knows what we want it to be.

“But to be honest,” she continued, “the knowledge doesn’t expand Shaping that much.”

“No…” said Verona, her small sliver of disappointment shrinking as her thoughts darted from one piece of information to the other, “but it connects the three, doesn’t it? And it’s the same with our twin – we can talk to each other, it’s like we share a brain, because we’re identical – on the DNA level, we’re the same.”

“Exactly,” Nyra said approvingly, and Verona felt a small flush of pride. “That’s the secret behind everything. Before our minds were broadened, we could only consciously control our connection with our twins, letting us speak with each other. But really, we’re all connected, Verona. Everything we’ve ever seen, ever done, anyone we’ve ever talked to or any place we’ve ever been leaves an imprint on us. And now, we can use that.”

Nyra shifted herself into a cross-legged position and abruptly closed her eyes, her brows scrunched together in concentration. Somewhat taken aback, Verona waited. What was the woman doing? It almost looked like she was Shaping something, but what?

A moment later, Nyra disappeared. Verona sprang to her feet, staring at where she had been, and in the same moment registered a soft thud behind her –

She spun around too quickly and was startled to see Nyra standing there quite calmly. Taking several steps backwards to regain her balance and trying to control her breathing, Verona said, “How the balance did you do that?”

Nyra was smiling now, apparently enjoying the scare she’d given Verona. “I teleported.”

“Well yes I saw that,” snapped Verona. She hated it when people made her jump and then laughed about it. But her anger drained away as she realized what she had seen. “But that’s - you’re supposed to only be able to teleport between planets, and there’s no way you had enough time to port somewhere else and then come back, even if you had somewhere to port to.”

Nyra sat back down, crossing her legs. Verona remained standing, arms folded.

“This, Verona, is where the real power lies. You know how if you’ve been to a planet before, you can choose to go to a place on it you’re very familiar with instead of the planet’s North Pole?”

Verona nodded. Not everyone could do it, but Analia had told her before how it turned tracking down some of the more widely-traveled criminals into an enormous headache for the police. Without the chokepoint of Customs to stop them, the police had little hope of figuring out where they went.

“Distance isn’t actually a problem. Connection is. We’re still not sure why people default to the North Pole, but the trick to porting elsewhere is to feel it. You’ve got to immerse yourself in the memory of the place, both the knowledge of where it is and the experience of being there, and the better you remember it the more accurate you’ll be.”

“So that’s why that door’s there – so I can use my Library to find the relevant memories.”

“You could,” Nyra acknowledged. “But it’s a bit of a waste of time. It’s faster if you just visualize it, though if you’re having trouble I suppose it could help. But don’t blow this out of proportion – it’s more difficult then I made it seem. One of the only places I could do what I just did is in this room.”

“Why?”

“Weren’t you listening? You have to relive your experience of being where you want to go. You can only port that short of a distance if you have spent a significant amount of time there. These are my quarters – of course I know them well enough to pull off that little stunt. But a random mall I went to with my kids ten years ago? I’d be lucky to be able to port to more than one location within it, assuming I could get there at all.”

That actually made sense, in an odd, thematic way. Not to mention it would be amazing to just be able to teleport to and from places you frequented, like your house or your school. Then Verona remembered something. “But the Blocking field – ”

“ – is like a cell,” Nyra said. “Try to leave its bounds, you’ll be stopped. But inside, you can move around freely.”

“Oh,” Verona said. She sat back down, her heartbeat having returned to normal while Nyra explained herself. “Can I practice?”

“Now?” Nyra checked her timepiece. “No – I don’t want to have to run all over the base looking for you, and we need to go meet Kyle and Merea in a few minutes. Do you have any questions?”

Verona thought for a moment, trying to organize all her ideas and theories. Maybe they had enough time to discuss some of them. “Do you think....”