Book 2: Chapter 71: Charlie
Bob
June 2213
Delta Eridani
Charlie hung in the rack, powered down and looking boneless. The Deltan android looked utterly convincing—I had put a lot of effort into getting the fur right, both in texture and layout. I didn’t want Charlie to come across like all the bad ape and werewolf costumes from twentieth century movies. This needed to be believable.
I realized that I was stalling. The android had been checked out every which way, and it was now time to put up or shut up.
Sighing, I ordered the cargo drone to open the hangar door, while I activated Charlie.
I turned my head and looked out the cargo bay doors. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the bright daylight outside. I undraped myself from the support rack and, staggering a little, walked to the doors. I stood for a moment, looking around at the forest. I’d seen all of this many times, of course, from the various drones, but there was something viscerally different this time. I was here in some undefinable way. It might be as simple as the feeling of the breeze lightly ruffling my fur, or the smell of the damp leaf layer that formed the floor of the forest. I spared a moment to grin with unconstrained joy, which the autonomic interface converted to a spread-eared, wide-eyed expression appropriate to a Deltan.
Stepping out onto the surface of Eden, I looked down at the ground, feeling the slightly slimy texture as the decaying leaf fragments squished between my clawed toes. Dappled sunlight flickered as the tree branches and leaves moved in the breeze. With an effort, I brought myself back on task. I triggered the heads-up display and pulled up a local map. The image hovering in my line of sight showed my location, and the location of Archimedes relative to me. I turned to line him up, and began to walk.
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