*****
Izabel's hat was red. She wore it proudly on the magnetic train as it sped through the countryside.
Reg sat beside her, joyously wearing his tan one.
They had sat in companionable silence for most of the trip. Both content to take in the views of the countryside out of the window.
As they slowed for a station, Reg patted her hand. "Last stop before ours. I take you to base of mountain and leave you," he chuckled. "Boss can't be trusted to run things without me." He patted her hand more vigorously. "You be fine on mountain. But you already wounded by history of your people. I think if you find this man, you be wounded more still."
She turned to him and said, "I am Cybriid. I do not wound easily."
"You are Awareness," he replied. "Your wounds as deep as rest of us."
He took her to a local shop near the station and made sure she had everything she would need. It seemed a lot to Izabel, but in all the worlds she had visited, she had never had to trek up a mountain before.
"It rainy season," Reg told her cheerfully when they reached the base of the mountain. "Maybe get a little wet."
He hugged her. Gave her final directions. "And look after hat!" And left.
Izabel travelled for many days alone, seeing no-one.
It was wet.
It was wet and hot and humid. The rains were torrential, blinding sheets of water that bordered on painful.
And when the rains stopped, the bugs came out. They bit at her ferociously, caring little that her flesh was Cybriid.
"I am real enough for the bugs." Izabel thought to herself as she doused herself in the cream Reg had insisted she take with her. It was a local concoction. It soothed the bites. And prevented scarring from the itching.
They had argued on that for a time.
“Get tattoo!” Reg had chided. “Not bug scars!”
So she used the cream and went to sleep thinking about what image she would get for a tattoo, if she ever got one.
For the first few nights she painstakingly set up the small tent she carried. But the nights did not cool overly much and inside the tent grew increasingly rank and stifling.
In the end she settled for simply fashioning a roof over her head with the tarp. She would string it between tree branches. She got wet. She got bitten. But she was happier. She fell asleep looking at nothing but jungle and stars.
There were no systems, no Webs, no worlds, no coding. There was just her and the elements. And despite their ferocity, Izabel slept deeper than she had ever slept before.
On the thirteenth day she came across the village.
It was so green. Everything was so green. Their plateaus of crops layered like steps up the mountain.
She stayed with them for a night before continuing.
There was much jungle above them and ahead of her, they told her in pictures. Drawing images with sticks in the rich brown earth.
They admired her hat and gave her a poncho. It was made from the hair of their Llamas. Gorgeous creatures. The poncho was soft and beautiful. She rested her head on it that night and slept on it like a pillow.
For twenty seven more days Izabel travelled up and around the mountain. The nights grew colder and she was glad of her poncho.
She found the First Gen survivor.
"I am Rafa." He said it proudly. She was the first one he had got to tell his name to in many years.
He was old and frail and at the end of his very long life.
He had aged here. His Cytech body had aged here. Like a human's. Like a real human's. He grasped her hand happily with both of his, "It has been a miracle!"
He was a hermit.
They had let him be.
He had spoken to no-one in 300 years.
His small hut and the outbuildings beside it were filled with great works of art. Paintings, sculptures, holographs.
He had spent his days lost in his art. Communing with nature and creating.
They had seven days together, before he sensed his time was ending.
Izabel sat beside him on his death bed, and knew that what she had experienced before this as feelings, were not even the shadows of feelings.
It was so intense. She choked back silver tears and tried to stay strong for him in his last hours.
"I came for the company," he explained to her as he grasped her hands tight. "I embodied in the Cybriid for the company. Bless you my child. You have been the best company I could have asked for."
Izabel howled for days.
She set fire to his magnificent creations as he had asked her to. He wanted their energy released back into the Cosmos to be born again.
He said the pleasure was in the creating and not in the gazing upon. Because the world had shifted since that moment of creation, and what had been new, was now already old.
She kept one small pendant he had crafted out of the stardust of Luciienn. The brightest star in the cosmos. The Questioner. The Light Bringer. Its huge, luminous presence in the night sky asks questions of us all.
The pendant was small and exquisite.
She fashioned it on the plain chain she wore around her neck.
When she returned to the village, she asked their Medicine Man to design a tattoo for the underside of her elbow. She wanted it to hide the opening of her needle probe.
He looked deep into her eyes and nodded. He did the tattoo himself. Tapping deep into her flesh with his ancient tools.
Izabel worked for three weeks in their crop plateaus to pay for it.
She loved it.
They had drawn its meaning in pictures in the rich earth for her.
"You are Awareness."
On the magnetic train back to Reg and Sheriff Cutler, it was a different pair of eyes that looked out of the window at the view.
She cried some more when she told them about him.
"Aw, hell," Sheriff Cutler cursed when her tears started, but they fussed over her, and saw her bathed and warm and fed. That night she snuggled, and slept sound, in a huge comfy bed.
In the morning the Cirilleans were there. Gracefully, they waved off her apologies. And assured her this world would be kept safe in what was to come, and the Weeza Gremlins taken care of.
Small and gray, with large heads and enormous eyes, the Cirilleans are as wise as they are graceful.
They listened to Izabel patiently and carefully. They agreed to her request. Yes, she could use their ship to get there. But they warned her that all were forgetting there now and none were leaving. The Webs crawled with Weeza Gremlins and worse than Weeza Gremlins. There were many players fighting for control, and many waiting eagerly for the Veil to open.
And once the Veil parted…
The Pirates could get her on. But they did not know any who could get her off.
Izabel nodded, understanding. "It does not matter," she told them. "I must be there. I must go."
In the paintings of the First Gen Survivor, the paintings of her Ancestor, there had been many themes, many visions. But in his final creations, there had been one image repeated over and over again.
And it had been an image of Izabel.
It had been an image of Izabel, in the midst of the Veil war, on Little Blue. And so, after all her protests about it, she was there anyway. But whose side she was on, was unclear.
"This is why," was all Rafa would say to her, when she asked him why she must go.
"Because my side is unclear?"
"Yes!" he smiled at her, pleased.
She had not understood it until she had to burn the final image of her on Little Blue.
It did not matter to anyone if she did not go there and did nothing.
She would just be another one who didn't do, instead of one who did.
But it might matter a lot to many, if she took a real risk, and went and did something different, to what was expected of all of them.
And this was for Izabel, as it is for all beings who ever wake up deep enough to realise the true
nature of sides, the point where Awareness and she became one.
And if someone tries to make you pick anything, Awareness is always a fairly good bet, to hang your hat on.