ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY-SIX: Worlds
186
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Alden ended up sleeping another night at the cottage and returning to Earth on Wednesday morning. As soon as he stepped out of Matadero’s teleportation chamber, he ran into a wizard in emerald green who asked him for his opinion, as a human, on housing design. Specifically ceilings—how low was too low?
Thrown for a loop by the randomness of the question, Alden said that humans preferred not to have their heads bumping into things. Then, he suggested that the inquirer talk to whoever would be living in the new building. Hopefully, the Artonan would listen to that last part more than the first. Alden didn’t want to be partially responsible for the creation of an apartment complex that was hostile to tall people.
Rapport I, Matadero, Celena North, he thought. A rotating set of places that are all new to me. I’m a vagabond who can’t even stick to one planet, so I definitely shouldn’t be consulted about other peoples’ home construction.
He wanted to get back to steadier and more predictable sleeping arrangements, but not enough to focus on it right now.
Thanks to his experience on the inward path, he had some fresh positivity and a concrete goal that neatly matched what he’d told both Neha and Stuart he wanted out of life right now. More disaster-proof than I was when the System went down that day. I want to be able to use my magic to protect myself and stay alive, and I want to know there are some people out there who are better off because I lived.
Proving that the person who he was now could save himself and Kibby sooner was so exhilarating that he wanted to call all his friends and tell them he was trying to do it. The only reason he wasn’t already getting into the nitty gritty of it with Boe and Jeremy was because he had calmed down enough to realize that his plans to go on an extended cross-moon camping trip with an Artonan child and kill a demon—in his dreams—went beyond the realm of quirky interest into unique personal obsession territory.
He’d roped Stuart into it, but at least demons and chaos were relevant to Stuart’s own future. Nobody wanted to hear about the hour Alden had already spent researching the nutritive value for humans and Artonans of a bunch of different foods that had been stored at the lab. Pink rice was really healthy. He’d feared poison, in that case, for no reason at all.