Sleeping Player (Project Chrysalis Book 3) by John Gold (novel24 TXT) 📕

“My body’s being restored, so that’s fine.” I take the stone back and look down at the pulsing inner light. Although…where did it go? There’s no light, not to mention the red shimmering. Am I hallucinating? Suddenly, I can’t feel my left arm, and it drops limply to my side. Soon, the whole left side of my body starts twitching unnaturally. It’s like someone is beating on my nerves.

“Fem, something’s wrong.” I collapse onto the ground and curl up into a ball. I’m wracked by convulsions, the rock falls out of my right hand, I grasp my chest frantically, and my vision fades. LJ appears out of the darkness, and he’s really worried by what’s going on.

Femida yells something, though her voice is lost in the gloom.

***

Eliza Donovan was on her way to a meeting with Mrs. Full, Angie Ganet’s former psychologist.

Her ship docked at the science department’s special port, where it was waiting in quarantine. The station’s superior ArtIn had given her permission to have their conversation in a specially prepared room on the infected ship.

The room was split into two halves separated by a powerful force field that killed all bacteria, though it smelled fairly unpleasant. Mrs. Full herself had some new plants she was tending to. Even the arrival of a visitor wasn’t enough to pull her away from them.

“Good afternoon, Miss Donovan. As you can see, our conversation will have to happen within the constraints of the quarantine. I hope that won’t bother you?”

“No, of course not. I’m more surprised by your age and what you’re doing with it.”

Mrs. Full looked like a mature woman in the final Anji recordings, and she looked positively old then. Given her status and the contribution she’d made to science, she could have easily gotten the rejuvenation procedure done for free. The second odd part was the thing she was doing right then. Why would a psychologist with a scientific degree be digging in the dirt like some kind of colonist?

“A very long time ago, when I was as young as you are now, I wrote my dissertation on comparative psychology and the differing behavior of people across generations. It looked at differences in technology, culture, and civilizational level to see how they impact public order. For example, there’s the issue of how getting pregnant and getting married is looked at differently depending on age. Little girls dream of macho men and princes. Older girls want a man with money. Women want a man with a house, and not just a man to stand beside them. Older women want a firm masculine shoulder to lean on. I wrote that dissertation almost a hundred years ago, back when Lunar still hadn’t invented the rejuvenation procedure. Ignore the fact that I’m working with the soil. I’m still a scientist, still a psychologist, and I’m currently reworking my dissertation. Culture has changed, and the invention of rejuvenation rendered my analysis of people and their coexistence across generations obsolete. Right now, I’m working on analyzing people of different physical ages with a variety of experiences. Society doesn’t recognize that everyday life is changing because of rejuvenation. A twenty-year-old boy can live with a girl who’s actually a hundred without ever knowing the difference, and that’s a cultural phenomenon I’m glad I can study. People subconsciously accept the wisdom they’re given from people their own age much more than they would from someone older.”

The older woman paused before continuing. “To take the same example of the inexperienced boy and the older, experienced woman, the difference can bear really good fruit. The boy grows into a man who takes responsibility for his actions and for the people near him—his parents, his life partner, his children, his subordinates. Accepting responsibility for someone is an important step, and it’s the only way boys become men and girls become women. Miss Donovan, there’s no need to smile. Kids can start having sex at any age they want, and that doesn’t make them men, women, life partners, or more intentional about the way they live their lives. But! If the boy or girl finds a more experienced partner who’s the same age as them, they get through that transitional period faster. Experienced partners instill values, one of which is responsibility for loved ones.”

“What does that have to do with farming and colonization? What do you need that for? You’re a first-level station citizen!”

“You don’t have the experience you need to really understand my position. People are much easier to understand when you talk with them in the context of their everyday lives, and not during an appointment in virtual reality. Anyway, what did you want, Miss Donovan?”

“Anji Ganet, your patient eleven years ago. According to the report, you labeled him a socially unadapted and potentially dangerous patient. He died from a stroke six years ago, so talking to me about him isn’t a crime.”

“Ah, silly Anji. I remember that case. That year, we were studying how to identify special abilities in children at a young age. The boy was a rare case at the colony, though his unwillingness to listen to adults and the isolation he put himself in forced us to lump him in with the socially unadapted group.”

“By rare, do you mean genius?”

The old lady put down her trowel and smiled widely.

“No. At least, not quite. What do you know about eidetism?”

“Photographic memory, occurs exceptionally rarely. Are you trying to tell me that that’s what Anji had?”

The old lady sat down on the other side of the force field. A smile played in the deep wrinkles creasing her face, the face of someone whose intelligence had not suffered with age.

“I was only definitively able to establish that he could recall absolutely everything he read. In the heat of the moment, however, he could recall exactly what someone