Read Daughter of Time 1: Reader for Free Online

That was the case on the day the bad news came.
    Just as the team was bubbling over with joy from my latest bored out of my mind performance, Dr. Talkative came into the room like a dark cloud. I could sense it in his voice and movements; I could nearly smell the anxiety in his sweat. Everyone else in the room likely figured it out by seeing his face. I bet it looked bad.
    “I have some bad news,” he overstated the obvious. He walked over to the computer station and paused a minute. “Fantastic performance today, Ambra.” He sighed. “I think you’ve outgrown us.”
    He placed his clipboard down with a clack and stepped back into the middle of the room to address his staff. “And like all children when they grow up, you must move on.”
    I heard several audible groans and the shifting sounds of uncomfortable people. One woman spoke up somewhat shrilly. “They can’t come now! She’s just showing us her potential! They won’t care about what she can do, what she could become. They’ll strap her into a navslav ship and she’ll waste away her life like the rest of them!”
    While it wasn’t exactly comforting to hear that I was headed for a lifetime of servitude, her outburst opened my eyes, so to speak. Truly startled me for the first time since I had come to this place. To hear them fall from the top of the food chain – it was priceless! The fear in their voices. Who were these mysterious They that were coming and over which they had no power? After coming to view the whitecoats as my local non-benevolent deities, it was discombobulating, and liberating, to see them shake.
    “That’s enough, Katie. It doesn’t matter what we think or want.” He paused a minute and spoke mordantly. “As you know, we have in our enthusiasm… tampered with their property. I believe it was a step in the right direction for science, for the potential that lies within the human race. But They may be displeased. I don’t have to remind you how serious the punishment can be for infractions.” There was complete silence. I could hear my own heart beat.
    “Nevertheless, as your group leader, I will take full responsibility for these actions. I pray you will maintain your appropriate demeanor when our visitors arrive tomorrow.”
    “Tomorrow?” someone called out in disbelief.
    “Yes. For some reason, we did not receive their long-range communication. They are entering orbit as we speak. Representatives will arrive in the morning.”

9
     

     
Once upon a time, Zhuangzi was dreaming that he was a butterfly dancing and flying about, joyous and free. He had forgotten that he was Zhuangzi. Then he awoke and felt himself solid and sure. But he didn't know anymore if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamed he was a butterfly, or, a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuangzi.  —Zhuang Zhou
     
     
    In orbit?
    What in the world did this mean? Frankly, in my readings and self-education through the accepted annals of human knowledge, the idea of visitors from outer space was an extremely unlikely and fanciful scenario. Like believing in ghosts. Or little blue elves. Sociology argued that human claims of visitation were the modern extensions of being visited by demons or angels, a “projection of our well-documented, overly active imagination contextualized to the modern mythology,” as one lecturer put it. Harvard professor, I think. And science texts, and respected astronomers and astrobiologists had pointed out many clear problems with extraterrestrial visitation. One of the most basic was the fact that the distances between even the closest stars would require centuries of travel. Hyperspace and warp-speed were inventions of science-fiction authors to make their stories possible. How ironic that my future would be intimately tied to hyperspace travel of a very real sort, helping to guide aliens that couldn’t possibly be visiting us. It was a sad case of solid thinking being wrong, even if more admirable, and loony thinking being