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Assignment # 6

Word Count: 885

Due Sunday, July 20, 1999

RenSime!

1. Laneff Farris ambrov Sat'htine, a disjunct renSime, must deliver a speech about research she plans toward Sime and Gen Unity and about how Mairis, candidate for World Controller of the Tecton (an organization dedicated to ending the Kill), will make her dream a reality if he is elected. Before the ceremony, she ignores her impulse to ask for transfer from a gypsy channel she sees/zlins, and then to sit in the audience during the preliminary speeches rather than with Mairis.
2. Because she is in Need and is outside the protective field of Mairis, who is a channel, she succumbs to the machinations of the Diet, a rival organization that wants to disrupt the progress of Sime and Gen toward Unity, and Kills a Gen.
3. Yuan, a strange Gen she had noticed just before her Kill, spirits her away, gives her a completing transfer, and takes her to a secret hideout of the Distect (a third organization dedicated to Sime~Gen Unity based on a different set of propositions and rules from the Tecton's). He explains his history and his hatred of the Diet, and pairs Laneff with Jarmi, a Gen he believes will be a good transfer match for her. He gives Laneff a laboratory and equipment to pursue her research. Laneff is very attra cted to Yuan (as he is to her), but is afraid to commit to him even though she believes Shanlun, the Gen she has loved for months, is lost to her because he is Tecton and she is now junct.
4. At the end of a month with the Distect, Laneff takes transfer from Jarmi, and realizes that Jarmi is nowhere near sufficient to stave off the lethal disjunction crisis Laneff will face if she does not kill again.
5. After transfer, she seeks Yuan out for sex, and just as she finds them, Azevedo, the gypsy channel from the first scene -- and Shanlun, now the channel's companion -- appear. Shanlun tells Laneff that there is a small possibility of Laneff surviving but asks her if she will marry him based on love, not on that slight chance. After much discussion, Laneff chooses Shanlun because he does not hate. Later that night, the Diet raids the hideaway and kills many of the Distect members. Laneff, Jarm i, Shanlun, Yuan Azevedo and a few others escape.
6. Laneff goes with Azevedo, Shanlun, and Jarmi and Yuan goes elsewhere. Before Laneff's group reaches a sanctuary in the middle of a gypsy district, Azevedo tells Laneff that she is pregnant. Once the group reaches the sanctuary Laneff is again given lab space and equipment. She has saved enough of her notes that she is able to resume her work with only a little backtracking.
7. Shanlun and Azevedo realize that no one in the sanctuary knows how to handle a pregnant Farris renSime, and Shanlun leaves to find Mairis and ask him to send a specially-trained channel for the job.
8. Laneff, lonely and in culture shock, immerses herself in her work. The two chemicals are mirror molecules and she believes that each will do two things in addition to identifying Sime and Gen fetuses: one will disjunct a Sime after First Year. The other will cause abortion.
9. Laneff has discovered that if she visualizes the molecules she wants to obtain, they form in the beaker, but has no explanation for the observation. In order to publish her findings, however, someone must replicate her results. She painstakingly teaches the skill to Azevedo, who finally succeeds.
10. Meanwhile, however, Laneff is unable to keep from Jarmi that their first transfer together was not sufficient to keep Laneff from entering disjunction crisis, and in desperation to be "enough" for Laneff, Jarmi inflicts pain on herself to raise Laneff's intil -- and Laneff Kills her.
11. After an intense and prolonged grief reaction (strongly laced with self-pity), Laneff realizes that her pattern of trying to take the safe route at each choosing has resulted in dead Gens. Laneff decides to risk her life and her baby's on a gamble that she has guessed correctly which chemical is the disjuncting agent.
12. On her next transfer day, she takes the chemical and in hallucination she flees the sanctuary and finds herself near the Monument to the Last Berserker. In desperation, she chains herself to the monument to keep from killing another Gen, even if the result is her own death.
13. As she looks at the relationships in her life, she sees facets of herself in each person she has known, all junct, all self-destructive. She realizes that there is no mass salvation of humanity to be had: only the salvation of each individual, from the inside. She chooses to walk away from the lust for killing, the lust for self-destruction. The choice made, she comes back from hallucination to reality.
14. Shanlun and Azevedo are there, each offering transfer. In her new serenity and clarity, she chooses Azevedo, the channel. Mairis, also present as part of his campaign tour, witnesses her disjunction.
15. Because she disjuncts in front of the large crowd, public opinion sways toward Mairis. He wins the election for World Controller, and is able to fund Laneff's work. Laneff's child is born and she pledges Zeor and marries Shanlun.

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