7. The RecordersA day later, Selene sat with Ondo in the green calm of the Refuge's central laboratory amid the clutter of fleck readers, dismembered machine parts and the teetering piles of ancient paper books he collected. Sometimes she thought the latter were only there for effect, to add to the whole dusty antiquarian look he went for.
Dotted around everywhere, also, were his beloved plants. The tallest, somewhere between a tree and a bush with plate-sized, purple-green leaves, towered over both of them. She was pretty sure he talked to them when she wasn't there.
In thirty years, he'd turned the hollowed-out caves into an oasis of peace and comfort. Artificial sunlight of just the right wavelength filtered down from above. It felt like they were sitting on some leafy balcony rather
