Chapter Seventy-Eight (Nakteti) (2/2)
”I just came to check on you,” he answered. ”You've had quite a few shocks today.”
Nakteti snorted a laugh. ”That's one way to put it.”
”Anything you'd like a non-educational video answer to?” He asked.
Nakteti tilted her face up to the rain as it blew across her on a gust of wind. When it passed she looked back down at the city. ”Too much. You Terrans are confusing.”
”Eh, we're pretty simple.”
That made Nakteti laugh. ”Simple. A people who in less than fifty-thousand years went from crude dwellings and caves to having over a dozen methods of faster than light travel and autonomous colony creation systems and have settled over twelve-thousand planets in less than eight thousand years. Yes, so very simple.”
There was silence for a moment, broken only by the rumble of thunder.
”It is what it is,” Major Carnight said, heaving his shoulders, which Nakteti's implant informed her, for the hundredth time, was a shrug.
Nakteti shook her head. ”I bought a solar system. Me. A ship Captain who lost her colony and had her ship blown to pieces on her, was able to buy a solar system because she uploaded a children's toy version of herself for home fabricators to make. Now my crew and I are able to buy an entire solar system for all of eternity.”
”Life's weird like that sometimes,” Carnight said, unhelpfully.
”The sale went through in less than an hour.”
”Yup.”
”I bought upgraded versions of Boom or Bust and our colony equipment,” she aid.
”Yup.”
”I arranged for travel for tens of thousands of my people on charter passenger liners with cargo ships to carry their personal possessions.”
”Yup.”
”Because I felt empathy for the small children who wanted to hug me.”
”Yup.”
Nakteti turned away from the railing and stared at Major Carnight, who was standing there, dressed in a soft cloth two piece sleeping suit, dark blue and covered with animated pictures of what she had learned were 'bunnies' jumping or dancing or nibbling grass or flowers.
The stared for a second at the large human, made of hard muscle and rock-like bone, who was wearing bunnies on his sleeping suit. She blinked, wondering if she was seeing things.
”What?” Carnight asked.
”I'm just...” she paused, unsure of how he'd react. ”Are those... are you wearing... bunnies?”
Carnight looked down at his pajamas then at her, giving another shrug. ”What? I like bunnies.”
It was all too much for her. The little bunnies just topped it off and made the complete lunacy of everything crash down on her. The sight of an apex predator wearing a sleeping suit with animated cartoon bunnies on it just the last thing she needed to fall apart.
She started laughing.
She couldn't stop.
Bunnies and solar systems and colonies and stuffys and some-assembly required models and AI's and everything else just collided inside her.
She tried to stop laughing but couldn't.
Major Carnight's implant alerted him to the fact that she was getting hysterical. He moved up, knelt down, and hugged her, putting pressure on her so her limbic system would calm her down. She kept laughing for almost two minutes before slowly calming down.
Finally she tapped him to let him know he could let go.
Nakteti felt better as he led her into the suite so she could go dry off. She went into her room, got undressed, and stood under the warm air dryer. She brushed her hair and grabbed a pair of modesty shorts and top before laying in the huge bed and staring at the ceiling. Her implant asked her if she wanted to see anything on the ceiling as she went to sleep.
A quick query got the images she wanted and the systems in the room dutifully showed them on the ceiling.
Video footage the survey ship had taken of the planet she had purchased. The probe flying over vast interlinked forests that contained no animals and barely any insects, over huge lakes empty of everything but base algae, across plains where grass wavered.
There was only one quick 1-month long survey done on the entire system. It was insane of her to buy a whole solar system, down to the mining rights, when for all she knew there was some kind of super-virus waiting to eat her people.
But she had done it.
Because she understood now. She understood it all.
She even understood the humans now. The bunnies had been the final clue.
They seemed insane, seemed crazy.
Because the universe itself was insane.
She understood.