Noumenon Ultra by Marina J. Lostetter

Author:Marina J. Lostetter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

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Biological Age: Eleven and a half

Location: Noumonian Plains

The human away team consisted of All Mother, All Father, No Mother, and Wes-Tu. And All Seer by extension. Two scouts, Nathair and Garden, who both had a parent in the cocoons, accompanied them as well.

The humans rode inside the rover, while the Noumonians opted to cling to the roof, allowing the rushing winds to tilt their wheels, to give their biological motors power. They would draw strength from those reserves on the climb down the sinkhole.

Jamal tried not to show how out of place he felt. No Mother drove the rover, while he, Wes-Tu, and All Mother occupied the cab. All Mother might look young sitting in her mech suit—barely a year if she was a day—but she held her face in a mature expression of somber contemplation. Her eyes were sharp, her mind focused and wise. When one spoke to All Mother, an old woman—not a baby—spoke back.

But he was truly young again. He knew his thinking was different now than it had been when he was grown. He knew a lot of the same things, general knowledge and such, but couldn’t process it the same. Couldn’t make the same connections he used to. His complexity of thought was still there, but the kinds of thoughts that occupied his mind were different. He did not take action with consideration of how it fit into the larger universe, he instead considered how his actions might look to the other Monument kids. He never used to be concerned with such things—with what others thought of him—but now it was a constant clatter in the back of his mind.

There were currently twelve Monument kids, fifty humans in all in the Monument to the Noumonians six hundred. After the effects of the Sora-Gohan were revealed, many of the Waterfall colony members came to live with them, and more of the tanks took their pilgrimage to the quarry to eat their fill and produce new offspring.

They’d encouraged the humans to do the same. They wanted all the families to grow, and All Mother agreed.

No Mother didn’t like it. She said the Convoy Twelve team had never come to colonize, that it wasn’t their place.

But the Noumonians took joy in new ones, always. No Mother hailed from an overpopulated planet, and they from an underpopulated one. As long as the resources were there, they wanted to share Mira with others.

Vanhi disappeared into her SD—going of her own volition—when Hope began to grow the first new babies. She hadn’t returned for decades.

Now, she checked in on the cab every few minutes with clipped updates on their pacing and arrival time.

Jamal had visited the crystal trees only a handful of times before. Most recently with the other Monument kids, when All Mother had taken them all to leave small tributes and speak to the sleeping Noumonians, suspended high in their fractured cocoons. She said it was important for the kids to see how biology behaved differently in different beings.

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