Vestige
Chapter 13

Tyra and Miriana wasted no time when they arrived back at their home-camping grounds, within the caverns of cMaj’s cliffs. Deciding not to wait for the Three Clans-vote, Tyra and Mirana, along with Miriana’s portable, relayed the conversations they had about the Three Clans’ possible need to relocate even farther out from the original campsite. The news about Miriana’s portable detecting long-range communications among the lunar synths and the local ones was also brought up. To backup its hypothesis, the portable projected diagrams and pictographic data showing, indeed, the sharp increase of communication among all the surviving synthetics!

To avoid the synths’ detection on cMaj, all three Clans always communicated in person or in pictographic writings, even though their modern communications—such as the cerebral-comms and other communicative devices—were still active and usable, thanks to the old Colony’s usage of photovoltaic tech! The operation of the portable devices among the clans appeared to be safe, they had noticed. The best they could guess, the computerables were self-contained, functioning devices. So long as the portables (from each, six adults from the old Colony) did not do distant-communications, the entire camps weren’t at risk of detection.

Tyra got the idea to Write out the Clans’ communications from all those years ago when she and her synthetic laborer technicians had stumbled across archaic systems of Writing. Back then, she had taken it upon herself to learn some of those ancient, and in some cases, dead languages.

Only a few other citizens of the old Ship had the knowledge of Writings when the Colony was still alive. Now that Tyra was the only one left with that ancient knowledge, she was even more determined to pass on that eon of cultures to her children…

But, of course, it was more than her long love for archaeology and culture. For the most practical reasons, the very nascent renaissance of Humanity did not want to risk being detected by the synths. So, the voting would be tricky.

Charmain suggested that all three of the families meet that night—at a centrally-located hide-away. That way the trip wasn’t too far for any of the families. For, if it was true what Miriana’s portable had detected and speculated on about the synthetic beings, the Three Clans needed to make a decision. Preferably, the same night of the vote. Whether or not to take on Tyra’s idea of permanently striking out much farther as not only three clans, but as one Tribe, at that point…

In the traditions of that old, defunct colony from a far-off star, the humans from the clans randomly picked one of the six portables—one for each, original Colonial member from the old Ship—to chair the voting session. It happened to be Fillip Natsome’s device. Like all the other portable devices that survive the bombing of the old Colony from the Synthetics’ Rebellion, Fillip’s portable had some wear, even with its voice actuator, but it was in pretty good shape otherwise.

The Clan Council was loosely based on the nodule-governance model from the old Colony. The humans were the voting body, and that included all the adolescent members of the three clans—the children. (Ten years old was the voting threshold, at the suggestion Luciana years prior.) However, the portables could interject, record, and facilitate the convening vote-count…a relatively complex system to govern the tiny speck of Humanity!

It was official: The Three Clans would venture off to cMaj’s expansive, plateau-filled horizon and seek to settle that region of the planet! Three of the family-members—Miriana, Bejonan—of Cairo an Preun and Luciana Salomenes, and Filleppe—of Fillip Natsome and Lanay Thuall, had voted to not strike outward; toward the horizon.

But of another subset vote-count—whether or not to lay claim to some of the outer edges of the old Ship’s debris field and to begin a new settlement there…of course, that also meant the strong possibility that the Tribe would then have to take up arms against attacks from the relatively nearby synthetic beings, plus some degree of exposure to traces of nuclear radiation from that blast of the old Ship…

Miriana was the only person to vote for such idea within the three clans.

Tyra gave her elder daughter a sympathetic look from across the cave after the last vote, all taken within a tucked-away cave in one of cMaj’s higher grounds. Miriana simply shrugged with a defeated look. Miriana was genuinely scared of that same future…in that she was not like her mother—the venturer and former technician that discovered a ticking time bomb of energy for the old Colony. Miriana liked to break out of whatever bubbles that life tended to encase humans in, but she liked certainty more.

After the votes and the official closing of the business, as was human nature in group dynamics, the clan members broke into informal sub-gatherings; talking about and reviewing the many serious issues awaiting the small human civilization. As the others discussed and chatted amongst themselves, Tyra saw Miriana quietly leave the cave. She followed her.

Tyra was relieved to see that her daughter only went a few feet from the entry of the cave. She was seated atop a jutting slab of stone.

“You know it’s nothing personal,” Tyra explained, after sitting next to her and had given her a hug. “They all just don’t see any other way to survive so close to the synths. Especially with us slowly growing.”

Miriana only silently nodded in reply. But then Tyra noticed how she froze with her mouth gaped! She was looking off to her left, where the cliff had wide ledges, which enabled the humans to traverse the cliffs so well.

That, of course, made her mother shoot up from the slab and started looking from across that ledge of the cliff to see what had shocked Miriana.

It was a sole synthetic being, perhaps about a hundred yards away. Even from that distance, both women could see the synth wore tattered clothing one would typically see on the humans! Even more surprising, the synthetic did something Tyra Housenn had not seen since the old Colony was alive just over twenty years ago—it flashed a short series of lights from its thoracic segment. It was an alternative to high-comm, where there were risks of the synths on cMaj being able to detect such signal. The combination the lights conveyed translated into, I come in peace. I am synthetic laborer Number Four…

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