Mio blinked and her 'implant' switched on. Suddenly, one of her bunnies had glowing green eyes. It was still chewing happily, just like the others did, but the eyes set it apart.

  Turning off the visual illusion feature made the glow disappear. It was almost time for the first otherworlders to arrive, so Mio switched it back to standqrd settings. No more glowy bunny eyes. Playing around with the overlay sometimes led to a lot of letters she didn't know covering her line of sight, but her confusion made that go away.

  Ever since the day of choice everything had been odd.

  Quietly, Mio got up to return to her house. HER house. Not her brother's anymore since he had chosen to leave.

  The tiny front room was where she took off her clogs before she parted the curtains and stepped onto the raised wooden floor covered by reed mats. There were a large box with an equally large sack of hay and several covers, her bed, as well as a box with her belongings and the fireplace with the clay tripod. Herbs were hanging from the ceiling and large clay pots filled the other half of the room, behind the straw curtains.

  The familiar sight almost made er forget the absence in her life.

  Almost.

  A handful of grains and water went into the tripod to soak, some more wood onto the fire and she was ready.

  Her wish somehow led the overlay to open a video in front of her eyes as soon as she sat. In her own language a person who looked oddly shiny in spoke, explaining many, many things. Like videos. Mio couldn't understand how it all worked even though 'manipulation of optic nerves' and 'saved data' and 'sattelites' and 'web access' had all been explained before. She suspected her frame of reference - another new expression she had picked up recently - was still lacking.

  Next was reading and writing. For this lecture to be mandatory had been a surprise. Why would anyone need it? Even so, she watched and used a stick to write on a white sheet on her box. The sheet and stick only existed when her overlay was on, but she could swear she could feel it under her fingers and the stick felt smooth and firm in her hand. No matter what anyone claimed, the overlay was magic.

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  The diminished clan waited on the ramparts at the gate. One moment there was nothing, the next a large group of people, likely a dozen or so, were standing in front of the gate, dressed in normal attire though they were all wearing the exact same clothing. For a moment Mio turned off the overlay. The people were still where they had been. Another nudge and the overlay turned back on, though it showed an icon she didn't know above the newcomer's heads. She had no idea what exactly she had done, but the implant had obviously reacted to her wish to know when someone was not, well, real.

  Not that she would mistake these particular newcomers for real people as they stood in a group. With their tall bodies, clear skin, shiny hair and weirdly uniform square jawed looks they seemed like a group of relatives.

  The otherworlders milled around, eyeing Mio's clan as much as Mio's clan was eyeing them. Then, one of the otherworlders rushed to the wall and started touching it with a broad grin. Another ran a few steps to the side to look down the hill, at the vineyard and the fields beyond in the flatlands below. Two were running around, stopping to look around, running a few more steps and then stopping to look again. Half of the otherworlders ran downhill, towards the forest.

  Finally, one knocked at the gate while another called up towards the clan, asking why they were outside and the gates of the starter village were locked.

  It was pure chaos.

  Mio had expected, well...she had expected sophistication, like the lady in the teaching videos. Or maybe she had expected them to be like the merchant caravan, bartering for the use of the guest house outside the fort.

  Not whatever this was.

  The elders were discussing what to do while Mio just watched the otherworlders.

  The ones who had been rushing about senselessly pointed up at her and the ot?er girls and waved with a smile. With some apprehension Mio waved back, though he was mostly staring at some of the older girls. He was young, not much older than Mio.

  What he did next made her doubt his sanity.

  He removed his tunic and moved his chest and stomach muscles. One of his relatives, a woman, pushed the man and he kicked her, but missed. Another otherworlder threw a stone at the half naked man and hit his head, resulting in a sudden scuffle that got dangerously close to the edge of the steep cliff edge on the north side of the gate.

  Under her wide, shocked eyes both of the other strangers shoved the half naked guy off the cliff and they all laughed - the laughed! They even looked up at them proudly like they had done something great, much to her horror.

  With a shiver, Mio ran to her grandmother in the group of elders. With what had happened just a moment before, allowing anyone in was impossible.