Dreaming Small

Nabri Chunza leg’s trembled and felt heavy where she stood. Brown rivulets streaked from her big, reddish-orange eyes, more out of apprehension than from the need to cool them. As it were, the eyes were the most sensitive organs of the cimbriam species of which she belonged. Their home, JLAC13, one of the moons that orbited Planet Nevida, was hot and humid, with temperatures equivalent to what would be 80° Centigrade on earth.

Her eyes strobed round the hall, taking in the hugeness of it. She was deep inside the bowels of JLAC13, about 17 farafets – equivalent to 11 earth kilometres. In an inas’ time – six earth hours – she would be speaking before the Vonas Council. This five member council would be deciding their species’ future – misery and annihilation, or contentment and progress – depending on how she argued her case.

Nabri Chunza’s mother-father and father-mother had passed on some time back. Rather curious, this cimbrian species. When two organisms mated and had offspring, they would take turns nurturing or looking for resources to do this, hence changing sexes in long intervals to do this. It had been an accident. The cable to the centiriser had frayed, leading to the device shorting. The household items had bounced back to their original sizes, crushing them instantly. She had then been adopted to Indiba – the scientific study institute and where she had specialised in the study of matter in all its particularities.

The atmosphere of JLAC13 was mostly carbon dioxide. As a matter of survival, the cimbrian species had evolved to have gill-like veins that covered most of their bodies in order to utilise the thinning oxygen gas present. That aside, the meteors strikes that had taken place an eon ago had upset the composition of the gases in the atmosphere – increasing the percentage of carbon dioxide, and with this, decimating ninety per cent of the cimbrian populations.

******

Elderess Vala gazed at her camerascope. Silently, she chanted her positive affirmations, transmitting them telepathically to Nabri. She was a believer – a private one at that, for believers were a very small minority in a world of overwhelming science. This as known believers were relegated to the fringes of cimbrian society; mainly as packers of diamonds.

Elderess Vala was one of the privileged. A special caste groomed to regulate power, ensuring that science was used mainly for the preservation of their species. Precocious from infancy, she had been borrowed from her mother-father and father-mother and placed at the Ruzu Diplomacy Facility; a special instructional facility dedicated to teaching the intricacies and nuances of power.

At the Ruzu Diplomacy Facility, Elderess Vala had chanced upon the Zinda – the room of forbidden knowledge. This as she had unwittingly utilised the knowledge imparted to her to manipulate Elderess Verati – the head of the facility then, to share that which was considered unscientific – dark wisps of rumours of what had been. That’s how Elderess Vala had turned into a believer. On hindsight, though, she now suspected Elderess Verati of leading her onto that pathway.

Zinda and Nemar, sacred places. In the whole of JLAC13, these were the only wide and free spaces. Nemar, dedicated to the guidance of science. Zinda, virtually unknown as the knowledge in there did not exist and was not encouraged to exist, even among the small minority suspected to think there was such a place as Zinda. Elderess Vala and Nabri Chunza were also whispered to be Anachi – those gifted with the power to be nowhere. Such is the power of myth, explaining away what science cannot deduce.

*****

Elderess Vala fixed her mind inwards, bending Nabri’s mind to gaze upon the ceiling of the hall. She thought it spectacularly wondrous – a dullish brown compound, slightly charred, known as wood. Transferring her gaze to the walls and synthesising them with her eyes, she filled her essence with the miracle of it all – a dark brown compound called magoni. Referencing a catalogue from one of the archived items – a book - retrieved from ages ago on a crashing spaceship, she chewed and bubbled the name – mahogany. This made her eyes blink severally in pleasure.

Mahogany. The book said. It also recorded various occurrences about a Planet Earth. One of the stories – and which the thought rather foolish at the time – was about diamonds. That the beings inhabiting this planet would gift one another pieces of diamonds; more so, as commitment for exclusive mating rights. In this planet, diamonds were a scarce and valuable mineral, was the inference. This in contrast with what diamonds were in her own habitation.

Slowly opening her eyes, Nabri realised that she had been viewing the other hall – Zinda. Subtly, she had been sent down this...