5 Breakfast with the goddess (1/2)

Bob Null wakes up with the smell of bacon. It's not a bad way to wake up, the only problem is that there shouldn't be anyone cooking it.

His daughter couldn't cook even if her life depended on it. Did he bring anyone home last night? No, he's pretty sure he didn't, he slept alone this time. He gets out of bed and grabs the baseball bat he keeps under it, then drops it.

”Yeah, great idea Bob, somebody must have broken in to steal cash and got hungry. Did I lend the keys to anyone? Nori's gonna kill me” he thinks.

Walking slowly to the kitchen he's speechless for how clean everything is. There's not even a single shard of glass on the floor; after the windows shattered the night before, it was everywhere.

There's a woman with red hair in the kitchen. She's wearing orange pants and tube top, no shoes, she's floating a couple of inches from the floor, and she's humming.

<Vesta!?>

<Good morning! Pancakes or bacon?> she asks cheerfully.

<How did you get in?>

<I flew. There's no glass on the windows.>

<So you decided to fly in and make breakfast?>

<I made quite a mess when I blew up the asteroid and you all looked exhausted. I tried to tidy up a bit; is everything fine?>

<I…guess it is> Bob answers, flabbergasted; the apartment was a disaster area, but now it looks perfect. That's not the only thing he's looking at. Vesta is floating towards the table, humming a cheerful tune, looking absolutely perfect.

<Null is your daughter, right?> she asks.

<You mean Noriko, yeah. How did you meet her?>

<She walked into the bar where I worked before it exploded. She never told me her name. You look…I'm sorry, I never know how to talk about these things…you have different…eyes? And skin color?> she says nervously.

<It's okay, I get that a lot. Her mother's Japanese. Wait, your bar exploded?>

<Well, no, somebody inside it did. Is Noriko alright after what happened tonight?>

<I don't know…with all the police and firemen and all that mess tonight I haven't really had the chance to talk to her. I figured I'd let her have a good night's sleep.>

<I tried to clean her room but she yelled at me.>

<Let me try it.>

It doesn't take much to get to Noriko's room: with his salary, he can't afford a decent place.

Bob is used to find a mess in her daughter's room; it's what you expect from a teenager. But what he finds is excessive even for her.

She's sitting on the floor, in her underwear and the same T-shirt of the night before, tinkering with some electronic parts. She has dismantled a TV, a cell phone and her alarm clock; the remains are scattered everywhere together with dozens of sheets of paper, filled from top to bottom with formulas and diagrams.

She's even torn the posters of her favorite bands from the wall, drawing some kind of spherical machine. Bob doesn't recognize the design, but the amount of details she came up with is insane.

<What the hell happened here?>

<It's a matter of processing power> Noriko answers, not looking up from the device she's building.

<What?>

<The Heart of the Universe> she answers, pointing vaguely towards the drawing on the wall; now that he thinks about it, Bob can see that the drawing is the cutaway of the spherical rock on the floor.

<It needs a very high number of inputs in order to work, and they need to be very precise. That's why the Many and I had so much trouble working it; even my brain can't generate easily that many instructions.>

<Did you even sleep, Nori?>

<Little less than an hour. I kept having nightmares about concentration camps and wars so I decided to keep myself busy.>

<Well, we're gonna be late. You've got time for a shower; we'll talk about this…mess after school.>

<Father, understanding this alien technology could be humanity's greatest technological achievement!>

<It can wait after breakfast.>