The Star Whorl (The Totality Cycles Book 1) Read Free

that?” he asked,
raising a vuu-brow.
         “A little pest was hanging
onto you,” Kreceno’Tiv answered, shrugging. “I sent it away.”
         Ro-Becilo’Ran raised the
other brow, not taking his meaning. Then his friend’s gaze centered past him,
and comprehension came clear. Kreceno’Tiv turned to see a familiar purple and
orange head bob in the crush, as if seeking.
         Gesturing annoyance rather
than projecting its glyph, and clacking his elytra-pace, he turned back to his
friend.
         “I’m tired,” he stated, “and
it’ll take the rest of the dark-turn just to get through this morass. I’ll see
you in the light-turn.”
         Ro-Becilo’Ran gestured understanding.
Kreceno’Tiv turned and began to make his way to the boulevard where he could
apply Nil’Gu’vua to his personal transport glyph. A pair of incredulous magenta
Gotra eyes locked onto him and watched him walk away.
     
    Whorl Four
     
         He almost began to regret
his decision to leave as soon as he glyph-conjured his transport and set it to
take him back home. There was nothing there to really amuse him, nothing to
fully distract or absorb his mind. Other than skimming the interlinked
dataSpheres, there was really little of interest to do.
         So, as he rode home, descending
from Algna Suprum to the Segela Miridum landform through one of the via-Ways,
and through a short-travel terminus, he began to browse his favorite discussion
forums, looking for personal accounts on interesting events around the world.
Since the Industrial Collapse, there were no formal, public information sharing
outlets, but the populace had taken to communicating any and all events even a
little bit out of the ordinary themselves, and it was all available through the
world’s dataSphere interlinks. Finding what he wanted required some elaborate
search parameters, however, with over a trillion Gu’Anin citizens in the
Totality to sift through. He delved into the local Gu’Anin Spheres without
fully engaging his dataSphere interlink, however – he was reluctant to use it
outside of the residence, over an insecure link. Instead he used the mobile
glyph-sphere of the transport as his data identification Sphere, one that would
disappear without a trace when the transport glyph was de-Nil-ized.
         First he checked the Sweeper,
who kept current on efforts by the Solidarim and the Gu’Anin Magistrate Council
that attempted to re-engage the population in industrial, trade, or managerial
employment. The Sweeper had posted a new discussion thread, and he brought it
up on his view-glyphographic.
     
         :The Sweeper
         :The Employment Resolve
is in full effect, everyone! Hurry, go to your new rewards offering recruitment
site, and get what most of us can obtain with a flick of our Nil’Gu’ua! Unless
you are one of the absolute lowest of the low, of course, still living barely
above the tops of the Ground Trees, here with the rest of us mfanya! Go ahead,
it’s fun, something to do besides sit around all turn watching our elytra-paces
silver over! Will it give you a sense of purpose? Will it fill your empty
little lives? No, only a position in the Solidarim could do that, or so I’m
told! Imagine, being in control of whole Worlds, with the native populations
under your vuu’erio tennae! I can only imagine such usefulness! You can, too,
with the new Employment Resolve. Or, like the rest of us, you can just accept
the despair, the quiet, choking, despair, and revel in it!:
     
         Am I giving in to the
despair? he wondered, scowling and clacking his elytra-pace as his short-travel
translation ended with him still far above the boulevard that led home. Why
should I? I have Secondus in a turn to worry about, and then hopefully Tertius.
That should be enough to mitigate it, shouldn’t it? But the truth was that
he was not worried about his lectures in the coming term of Secondus – he had
already voraciously