Free The Mirage on the Brink of Oblivion (The Epic of Aravinda Book 3) by Andrew M. Crusoe Page B

eat together. Why hadn’t she hurried Asha and Zahn along so she could get back in time?
    “I’m sorry if you were waiting for me,” she said.
    “Oh!” He glanced over for a moment before turning back to the open nugget. “I didn’t feel you come in.”
    “Must be a pretty good one then. What’s it about?”
    “New supply orders. The director and I are contacting all of the other districts. Hopefully, one of them will actually be able to do their job.”
    Jyana hesitated, unsure of what to say. “Are you hungry? I can prepare something.”
    Torin raised his hand slightly. “Maybe in a while. I’m already pretty charged up from this.” He looked over to the oblong packet and then met her gaze. “Don’t worry. I assumed those visitors would take a while to get situated. Didn’t you say you had a few things to catch up on? Why don’t you do that, and then we’ll eat?”
    The shadow sprite flashed into Jyana’s mind, and she looked below the cluster of nuggets floating around the work area, looking for little holes or weaknesses in the dome’s construction. It was seamless, so why was she concerned?
    “Okay,” she said. “I’ll do that then.”
    Jyana suddenly felt sad, and drifted over to another work station on the opposite side of the room. Over here, her own thought-nuggets were arranged neatly in even columns in front of the curved wall, glowing spheres that stretched up from the floor like a little city skyline.
    The sight of them usually made her smile, but not today. She sat in front of them and took out her T-relay to check the response to her findings so far. In addition to storing scientific information, it stored incoming thought-nuggets. Dropping down to the physical to meet the visitors meant that she’d lost a couple days, and she’d purposely put her relay on silent during her tour of Mirage City.
    Why did she care so much about the planet’s environment when everyone else only cared about the Mirage? So far, the work had yielded an unpredictable payoff. Jyana had thought about it many times, and at the end of the day, she decided that the wildlife of this planet was much more real to her than a thousand cities built of ideas. The plants and animals had vulnerabilities and could die. Compared to that, the Mirage looked like a playground, and was perhaps too utopian to still be compelling to her.
    Or perhaps that was only the story she told herself. Sometimes she wondered if the real reason she continued on this path was blindingly simple, that deep down, she felt it was the only kind of work she was suitable for.
    She pursed her lips and unfolded the relay.
    When it was fully open, five bubbly nuggets flowed out of it and into her head, and dozens of things became clear at once.
    First, there were only a few new responses since she’d last checked, and half of them questioned her methods, even though she was using a well established technique and cited the original research nugget. Jyana shook her head. She wrote back to them, trying her best to find a polite way to encourage them to actually read the citations before shooting her down.
    Second, one of the messages was not from an ordinary member of the community. To her shock, Advisor Kathini, who was on the Royal Committee for the Environment, was requesting to meet with her later. The message was short, calling her findings intriguing, but it wasn’t enough for Jyana to discern if Kathini would take it seriously or not.
    Still, this could be yet another strategy to try and recruit Jyana into a new assignment. Various agencies had tried to do it in the past. Torin said that they recognized her talent, but Jyana preferred to be an independent researcher, the purest form of scientific inquiry. No hidden motives or agenda. Pure.
    Then again, she had to admit to herself that she was losing faith. If she’d conducted solid research into the local environment, came to a solid conclusion that the seabed was suffering, and no one seemed to