Survival Aptitude Test: Sound (The Extinction Odyssey Book 1) by Sheriff Mike

Author:Sheriff, Mike [Sheriff, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Appended Press
Published: 2016-10-31T23:00:00+00:00

* * *

AN HOUR LATER, Daoren still threaded rows of stacks on the first level, one of ten levels in the Spires. At this rate, he might spend the rest of the day and most of the night finding Laoshi.

Fifty feet high and two hundred feet long, each stack held two hundred-thousand glass scrolls in individual nooks. Readouts below each nook identified the scroll’s repository number, the digits highlighted in blue or red. Blue indicated an unlocked scroll, free for prospects to remove and examine. Red meant the scroll was locked and forbidden to access. Red digits outnumbered blue by a factor of ten to one, the same depressing ratio he’d encountered during his four years of tutelage under the Libraria.

Despite the abject censorship and general disinterest in cultural history, the stacks teemed with prospects. They perched on slender huvvadisks, ascending and traversing the looming faces, plucking scrolls for closer study. Using their quantum tiles, prospects could air-query the Spires’ repositories by number, topic, historical period, and a host of other metrics. Huvvadisks would then take them to the desired scrolls, eliminating the need for aimless wandering in the city-state’s most voluminous structure.

Daoren emerged from the stacks and entered a yawning amphitheater. Hundreds of seated prospects gazed upon a stage finished in black lumenglass.

An Asianoid Librarian paced the stage amid a plasmonic map. A three-dimensional representation of continents and oceans lapped at her knees, the expanses labeled with the names assigned by the ancients. A red swath tinted Eurasia. It spanned the supercontinent from the East China Sea to the English Channel.

The Librarian halted. She motioned to the swath. “See the bounds of Mother China before the Cycle of Extinctions? It was the most powerful empire the world had ever known.”

An Africoid prospect stood, a ten-year-old girl with inquisitive eyes. “What’s its size today?”

The Librarian aimed her reply at the map. “Advance time.”

The red swath retreated westward upon the command, then shrank southward toward the Italian Peninsula. A sandy-brown stain advanced in its place. When the motion ceased, the red swath tinted no more than three-quarters of the peninsula.

“Our empire may be smaller,” the Librarian said, “but it’s still the most powerful. Mother China lives on in Daqin Guojin.”

“What caused the sands to grow?” the Africoid prospect asked.

“The death of all things living and millennia of erosion, child. Our best technological minds couldn’t stop its advance.”

“Is it true the closest mongrel colony lies two hundred miles to the north?” another prospect asked.

“One hundred and ninety miles, boy. Beyond the Great Northern Border.”

The plasmonic map complemented the Librarian’s reply by tracing a raised line that bisected the peninsula from west to east, three-quarters of the way up its length. A dagger-shaped outline resolved north of the border wall. Its southernmost tip pointed at the heart of Daqin Guojin. A single word appeared beside the outline.

Havoc.

“The mongrel colony Havoc will render our civilization extinct if we let down our guard,” the Librarian said. “We must be ever wary of its incursions.”

Daoren rolled his eyes.

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