Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

Public Service Announcement

Riss sat in the dark listening to the rumble of the ship below him. He wasn't sure what he was feeling. He hadn't had much time to think since he had escaped from the council goons, but now that he was here, in the quiet and the dark, he had more than ample time to think and four cortical hemispheres to do it. That was honestly the one unfortunate thing about being unable to sleep, you had plenty of time to brood.

Starr clusters passed him outside the window rolling by with no sense of regularity, no pattern.

They had given him a rom when he boarded the ship, not that he had really needed one, but he appreciated their act of courtesy towards him. Humans were like that, they had some very strange conventions when it came to being courteous. He had done his best to study humans on a psychological level where Dr. Krill had studied them on a more physical one..

Dr. Krill was his hero after all.

Or one of them.

As far as humans went, they were a very social species, and so tended to have a lot of social conventions related to their social nature. When he boarded the ship he was properly greeted by the other humans and offered a nesting area of his own. Humans preferred to live together with other humans, in at east a pair but mostly three or four if not more. Some humans did prefer being solitary, but most of those still tended to live in the same vicinity as other people. However, when it came to their nesting grounds, humans liked to have their nests to themselves.

The only time humans shared a nest with anyone is whey they were a mate with that person, or if they were taking care of children, though it was the general convention to make sure that children had their own nest early on in life.

It would make sense then that the first thing they would offer him was a room.

Riss floated up against the window and sighed, staring out at a passing nebula.

The council, that is what his real problem was, that was his real danger.

He knew they weren't just going to give up.

Sure they gave up on Dr. Krill, but he wasn't really a threat to their way of life, he just wanted to go off and explore the universe and write papers about humans. It was an annoyance to the council sure, a slap in the face maybe, but the kind of information Riss had was dangerous information.

He had stolen evidence that the council was genetically and psychologically manipulating it's people to keep them in line including brainwashing and epigenetics.

Not to mention Riss had another theory.

No one he had ever spoken to had ever seen one of the council members change.

They were always the same Vrul.

Even the oldest Vrul he had ever talked to had never made mention of seeing the council change.

And if no one had ever seen them alive, than that meant the older generation had all been terminated before the council had. The council were the oldest Vrul in existence, but that was because they didn't generally let vrul live longer than 60 full rotations. Speaking with other doctors, Riss had determined that no one really knew what the lifespan of a Vrul was.

But based on the theory of diverging evolution between them and the Gibb, he knew they could live well over 100 years old.

The oldest Gib in existence was almost 600, so it begged the question.

Were Vrul long lived, and was the council actively trying to prevent that for their own ais.

Was it possible that the vrul who ruled over the city were the same Vrul that had ruled over the city for the last hundred years?'