Building a Nest of Our Own
Copyright© 2020 by Vincent Berg
Preface
The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper,
and re-imagines the world.
Malcolm Gladwell
A brief word, before the story begins, about some of the conventions used.
Telepathic messages, the dialogue shared between two character’s minds, are denoted with a combination of single quotes and italics, as the following sample demonstrates.
’Zita, I need a little assistance, here!‘
You’ll also notice that many of the telepathic communications begin with a comment about their communicating via Zita’s links—since Zita is the telepathic communications expert, and the only one with the required quantum links the others don’t have. This was a holdover from the first book, The Cuckoo’s Progeny, which originally handled these communications in plain text dialogues (with only the text-based acknowledgments).
There are also frequent mentions of both “homeworld” and “home worlds”. A culture’s original home world is their “homeworld”, while each individual species has their own “home world”, where their people originated on.
Understanding that it’s been a while since the previous books were published, you may feel lost initially. But don’t worry. Although there isn’t a ‘who’s who’ recollection of past events, the particular relationships between the individuals is not essentially in understanding the story. If it is, they’ll be made apparent. However, if you’re confused by who someone is at any point in the story, simply turn to the Character List at the back of the book, as everyone in the book has a short description which should be enough to jog your memory.