Stray (38 page)

Continued in Part Two: "Lab Rat One"

--ooOoo--

Thank you for reading

"
Stray
"

The
Touchstone
story is continued in
Lab Rat One.

Books by Andrea K Höst: Fantasy

Arabaya

Hunting

Ash Lenthard is out for revenge – if only she can get around a bothersome foreign noble, and her lurking past.

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Darest

Champion of the Rose

Champion only in name, Soren Armitage must learn to live up to her role in order to save king and kingdom – but can she trust the one she must protect?

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Bones of the Fair

A political crisis sends Darest's most powerful mage to the border.  But can his companions survive the challenge he faces – and him?

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Eferum

Stained Glass Monsters

A looming battle between two insanely powerful mages.  A stubborn orphan.  And the eerie, unnatural Kellian, dangerous and oddly alluring.

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Medair

Medair sought a weapon to fight back an invasion, but the war was lost in her absence.  Misplaced in time, she cannot find a place in her new world until she overcomes the hatred ruling her heart.

Collected together as
The Medair Duology

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Part 1:
The Silence of Medair

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Part 2:
Voice of the Lost

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Books by Andrea K Höst: Science Fiction

Sydney Apocalyptica

And All the Stars

Aliens invade Sydney, and loner Maddie is caught between fighting back or just surviving.

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The Touchstone Trilogy

An aussie teen walks into adventure, monsters, nanotech and homesickness.

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Part 1:
Stray

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Part 2:
Lab Rat One

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Part 3:
Caszandra

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Part extra:
Gratuitous Epilogue

A frothy added extra for the Touchstone Trilogy, full of weddings and babies and very little plot.

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www.andreakhost.com

Glossary

Agowla
- The (fictional) high school Cass attended in Sydney.

Aspro
- Aspirin

Carche Landing
- The main airport in Unara.

Casszilla
- Rawr!

Cruzatch
- A dangerous humanoid Ionoth, shadow burning white.

Ddura
- An enormous energy being created by the Lantarens.

Deep-space
- The large portion of the Ena which exists between the 'memory spaces'.  It is white in appearance, and filled with gates which open directly to real-space worlds.

Deep-space Ionoth
- Ionoth which are formed and dwell not in the relatively small Spaces, but instead in Deep-space.

Diodel
- One of the ships KOTIS uses to travel between Tare and Muina.

Do Not Go Gentle
- "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night", a poem by Dylan Thomas.

Drone
- An advanced robot, usually used for scanning and monitoring.

Ena
- A dimension connected to the thoughts, memories, dreams and imagination of living beings.

Ena manipulation
- A psychic talent which can change the substance of the Ena, particularly in stabilising gates between spaces.  It can also be used in a limited way to change 'reality'.

Escort quest
- A mission in an online game involving protection of a non-player character while they travel.

Fan service
- Revealing or provocative shots of characters in anime/manga.

Fanfic
- Fiction based on the stories of others and/or fiction involving a person of whom the writer is a fan.

First level monitoring
- Interface monitoring which triggers an alert if certain conditions are reached (eg. loss of consciousness, heart attack).  All residents of Tare are on first level monitoring.

Gate
- A tear or rift between spaces/worlds.

Gate Sight
- A psychic talent which can judge the status of gates between spaces.

Gate-lock
- An enclosure built around a gate from near-space to real-space to prevent Ionoth from passing through.

Gelzz
- A now nearly-extinct cave-dwelling Taren insect noted for its tendency to admit a lingering rotten odour as a defence mechanism.

Goralath
- The name originally given to the ruins where Pandora is later established.

Gorra
- The first island settled on Tare.

Hasata
- A city on Tare.

HSC
- Higher School Certificate.  Received when graduating from high school in Australia.

Ian Thorpe
- A famous Australian swimmer.

In-skin
- An immersive interface experience where most of the senses – sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste – are stimulated.

Interface
- An in-body nanite installation used by Tarens as personal computers/the Taren internet.

Ionoth
- Creatures which form in the Ena, usually remnants of the dreams and nightmares of inhabited planets.

Ista
- An honorific for medical doctors.

Isten
- Professor.

Joden
- The Taren equivalent of a minute, though the unit is longer than an Earth minute.  One hundred joden equal a kasse.

Kadara
- Naturally-forming massive Ionoth.

Kalrani
- Trainees not yet qualified as Setari.

Kasse
- The Taren equivalent of an hour, spanning approximately two and a half Earth hours.

Kasse
- Two and a half Earth hours.

Kolar
- A hot, arid world settled by Muinan refugees, and advanced technologically by the Tarens.

Konna
- Both the city and the island where the main KOTIS base is located on Tare.

KOTIS
- An acronym for the "Agency for Ionoth Research and Protection".

Kuna
- Supplementary memory provided by the interface.

Lahanti
- Leaders of the cities of Tare – an equivalent to a 'mayor' of a city-state.

Lantarens
- The ruling class of Muina before the disaster.  Powerful psychics.

Litara
- One of the ships KOTIS uses to travel between Tare and Kolar.

Massives
- Ionoth of unusually large dimensions.

Muina
- A world abandoned after a disaster brought about by the Lantaren psychics.

Nanites
- A machine or robot on a microscopic scale.

Near-space
- The envelope of Ena immediately surrounding a world, full of reflections of the world as it currently is – and it's most recent nightmares.

Noob
- A new gamer who does not fully understand how to play.

Not happy, Jan
- A popular phrase taken from an Australian television commercial for Yellow Pages.

NPCs
- Non-player characters – a gaming term for characters in a game which you are not expected to fight.

OMGWTF
- Oh my god, what the fuck?!

Pandora
- First Taren settlement on Muina.

Path Sight
- A talent for location.

Pippin
- A small animal of excessive cuteness.

Public Space
- Virtual décor visible to all interface users/anything accessible to all interface users.

PVP
- Combat in online games where players fight other players rather than computer-controlled opponents.

Rotation
- Setari missions in the Ena designed to cover Ionoth respawn near Taren cities.

Rotational space
- A space in the Ena which moves so that its gates regularly align and move out of alignment.

Sa/Tsa
- An honorific for academics.

Schoolies
- Australian highschool graduates celebrating the end of school during "Schoolies Week".  Primarily located around the Gold Coast in Queensland.

Second level monitoring
- A safety/security interface setting causing all sights and sounds experienced by the monitored person to be retained in a secure log which can be accessed under exceptional circumstances.

Setari
- Psychic combat 'Specialists' trained since childhood to combat Ionoth.

Sf&f
- Science fiction and fantasy.

Shared Space
- The interface equivalent of a conference call.

Spaces
- A concept used in multiple contexts on Tare, covering 'world', 'dimension', 'area', 'region of the interface', and many others, but most particularly 'a bubble containing a fragment of a world remembered and reproduced by the Ena'.

Stilt
- A spindly-legged deep-space Ionoth.

Stray
- A person who walked through a wormhole through the Ena to another planet.

Swoops
- A variety of deep-space Ionoth resembling a pterodactyl.

Tairo
- A kick-ass ball sport.

Talent
- A psychic ability.

Tanty
- Tantrum.

Tanz
- Taren air transport.

Tarani
- A many-legged deep-space Ionoth reminiscent of a caterpillar.

Tare
- A harsh, storm-wracked world settled by Muinan refugees.  The highly technologically advanced inhabitants live crammed into massive whitestone cities.

Taren year
- One third of an Earth year.

Third level monitoring
- Active observation of everything a subject sees and hears.

tl;dr
- Too long; didn't read.

Tola
- A classification of Ionoth which have little physical substance.

Toolies
- Adults preying on teenagers during Schoolies Week/pretending to be a Schoolie.

Touchstone
- The subject of the story.

True-space
- The world, not the Ena.

Tsa
- A general honorific similar to Mr/Ms.

Tsaile
- Commander.

Tsee
- Setari Squad Captain.

Tsur
- Director.

Tyu
- A zither-like musical instrument.

Unara
- The largest city on Tare, located on the island of Wehana.

Unco
- Uncoordinated.

Unstable rotation
- A rotation where the spaces are more likely to change and bring unexpected situations.

Wehana
- The largest island on Tare, almost entirely covered by the city of Unara.

Whitestone
- A building substance formed with nanites.

Zelkasse
- A quarter of a kasse.