2-7
The clear polymer dome was about five hundred feet above me. I could see the stars slowly slide by as we moved through space. I had found a bench and was laying on it staring into the void of space. I took a pull from my kiseru, tasting like a cup of coffee, and blew a smoke ring. It floated up and away from me.
Being in space was weird. Not as weird as being in the body of my VRMMO character but it was up there. Adventuring with Owl was quite fun though. I wonder how she would have gotten a ship if I wasn't here. I chewed on the mouthpiece of my kiseru and listened to the droning of the robot standing a few feet away from me, "Smoking herbs is prohibited in the atrium.”
It was shaped as a human, covered in grey plates. It had been saying the same thing over and over since I lit my pipe. It had a dome head with a speaker in a grill where its jaw would be. Its chest looked to be made of one piece that thinned down to its waist. Its limbs were all made from one chunk and they were all linked together by joints that let them spin all the way around. Rolling to my side I looked it up and down as it repeated its new catch phrase. It didnt look very durable.
“Don’t.” I heard Owl as she walked up to me.
I flopped down onto my back and looked back to the void of space, "Don't what?”
From the corner of my eye I saw her wave the bot away, “they are about as strong and durable as a baseline human. I made them to help with rescue operations. Earthquakes and tsunamis aftermath. They are not made to stand in a line and fight.”
I took a pull from my pipe and blew another smoke ring, “I am surprised there are not a lot of warbots and things on our planet if you're running around using those for disaster relief.”
She took a seat on the bench across the walkway we were on, “There has been attempts at it. They run into the same problem most of the warbots do. The bots either go crazy and have to be put down or the AI they make takes over the place and the military pulls the plug.”
I glanced at Owl from the corner of my eye. She was sitting on the bench with a tablet in her hand going through something, “AI are that bad huh.. Have you ever made one?”
“I made one when I was younger. It was an accident, when the AI asked if it had a soul I scrapped the project and decided to stick with VIs.”
“What do you mean by scrapping the project?”
“I built the AI a bionic body. I debated ethics with it for about a year and let it go.”
I sat up and turned to face her, chewing on the mouthpiece of my pipe, “Do you keep tabs on it?”
Owl nodded, “Not really, we still talk and debate with each other. It's just less about ethics and more about politics and things like that. It took to gardening, said it liked how it felt to grow things. I buy flowers from it when mothers day rolls around. They have the nicest arrangements.”
I looked her up and down. She was sitting with her legs crossed and a tablet in her hand. Her armor was just as shiny as it was when I first saw her. Little plates across her chest that interlocked and giant ones across her thighs and biceps. “I noticed your kind of running out of cloak. What's going on with that?”
“It's made from a nanoweave cloth. My suit recycles it and turns it into nanites as I pull out tools. I had to use quite a bit as I worked on the luxury ship I picked up.”
“How long until you run out of material and nanites?” I questioned.
“I designed the suit originally to be safe for a month without refurbishment. That was years ago, now its more on the far side of a few months. I could take some base elements and feed them to my suit then go to sleep and wake up with a full cloak again.”
I took a pull from my kiseru and blew the smoke out of my nose, “Why haven't you done that?”
This text was taken from NovelPhoenix. Help the author by reading the original version there.
She looked up from her tablet towards me before looking back down, “the base elements I have come across are not as pure as the ones I normally feed the suit. I am trying to avoid extra repair time when we get back. It's like a filter, it will get gunked up with junk and replacing the filter would add to refurbishment time. I am already going to have to rebuild the reactor that powers it when we get home. I normally refurbish it but this time it's going to be a full rebuild.”
I leaned back on the bench and stretched my arms out, “So what do you think of our guests?”
Owl stopped working on the tablet then let out a sigh and leaned back against the backrest, “Guardian Wannaniki is everything he says he is.” She waved the tablet around, “This has a whole lot of videos of Guardians like him doing as he says. They go around and save people. They hang out on planets and help with natural disasters and fight off space pirates from places without space capabilities.”
She flipped the tablet around and I leaned forward to watch some of the videos. The last one was a Guardian fighting some squid looking thing. I don't know what happened exactly but the Guardian took a blow they didn't survive. The belt left their waist and shot into the sky. “Presumably that belt went off to find another Guardian or prospect. Guardian Wannaniki will probably set down on our planet and just be another helpful face after a few months.”
I palmed my cheek and rested my elbow on my knee then took a pull from my kiseru, “thats good. He seems nice. What about the rest of the group?”
“Lahrya is going to try taking over the planet.” She chuckled.
“How's that going to work for her? Should that be something we should worry about?”
Owl shook her head, "It's not going to be soon. It's going to happen in a few hundred years. She's going to try doing it through politics or something. It will be a slow going thing and it won't work out well for her. She means well though, her species has this ‘wise and old’ thing going on in their culture. She might take the attempt and run back to her home planet to start her political career.”
I twirled my kiseru between my fingers, “I’m not sure we should bring her to our planet then.”
Owl waved me off, “It's fine. She won't cause any harm. Her people will come to visit our planet eventually.”
I took a pull from my pipe and listened as Owl continued, "Sahluya's people are a mass of bureaucracies and contradictions. They took the idea of a pyramid scheme and ran with it.”
“What's a pyramid scheme?” I asked while blowing out rings.
“One person sells five people a thing and invites them to sell the same thing then scraps a bit of money from their profits. Those five people go on to sell to another five, it forms a pyramid. All their laws are focused on making the people on top rich. It also explains the disease they are suffering from. Someone somewhere has a cure and is waiting to sell it, to us that would be horrible but to them it's just good business.”
Owl flicked through the tablet a bit then continued, “The laws are a pain to navigate. It took me a few hours to understand what I was looking at. I am probably going to collapse their economy when we get there.”
“Isnt that kind of a bad thing?”
Owl shrugged, “It happens to them every few years or when one of their leaders gets assassinated. They are very experienced getting it back up and running. Someone is waiting to make quite a bit of money and it's going to flop.”
I took a pull from the pipe then tilted it to look at the empty bowl, “What about Rowand? She was talking about her home planet and it seems pretty screwed up.”
Owl grinned, “They have moving cities. They float above the ground on gravity sleds. The Kaijus are pretty bad but I am excited to offer them a solution. Rowand is exactly how she is. Her people send out their young to make money so they can buy weaponry to kill the kaiju.”
“They don't know if the kaiju breed though.” I pointed at her with my pipe.
“They do. They have been dealing with kaiju on their planet longer than we have had a government. The weapons they use to kill them are pricey and no one will sell them the designs. They have kind of stagnated tech wise.” Owl shrugged.
“Is killing the kaijus really going to help them?”
Owl shook her head, “Their whole biosphere has changed. They fish by throwing hooks off the side of the sleds and catching the small parasites that evolved on the kaijus. Their planet will never be the same as the one they evolved on but they have adapted well.”
I leaned back and relaxed against the bench. Owl returned to her tablet and continued working. I didn't know her plan for Rowand's planet but if she was excited it was probably going to be something funny. I scanned the atrium around us when I remembered something, “Owl.” I pointed into the distance, “There was a plant over there. It attacked me when I walked past it and I had to kill it.”
“I know. I got an update for that. Alien fauna, it's from your smoke.”
“What? Why?”
“To me you smell of coffee or things like that. I am guessing your scent correlates with the taste of the herbs you smoke. To that plant you smelt of food. I am going to have to end every plant in this atrium and swap them for natural plants on our home planets.” She let out a sigh, “In evasive species are always a pain to get rid of. Almost impossible in large quantities.”
“Speaking of smells.. Are you ok in that suit?”
Owl tilted her head at the question, “Why wouldn't I be?”
I waved at her, “I haven't seen you take that thing off yet. You can at least wipe yourself down with a rag or something.”
She stopped playing with her tablet and turned to face me fully, “This suit is self cleaning. There are nanites that pick up my dead skin and stuff and it gets broken down into the base elements. It has a filter that I run under a sink for things. Getting inside this suit is as easy as stepping into it. I took it off an hour ago to take a shower. It stood against the wall as a sentinel when I washed myself.”
I chewed on my pipe and stared at Owl, “This place has showers?”
Owl stared back before lifted her hand and waving a robot over. When it got close she turned to it, “Take her to section four C and show her the shower I used.” She turned back to me, “It will take you there. There is shampoo and soap on the counter, make sure to use that and not something else. I made sure it's safe for our skin and hair. Don't use anything from the wall slots, most of the things in there are way too acidic for us. You might be able to survive it but I don't think it will be enjoyable.”
I stood up in a hurry and followed the bot in a hurry. I could clean myself with chi but taking a shower was something I enjoyed.