Chapter 65 – Oddities

The flight through the canyon is not very long, despite it's incredible size. We fly seven thousand kilometers between the massive stone cliffs, getting progressively smaller and less impressive with time bar some exceptions, and cross this distance in slightly more than two hours of pleasant flight.

After that there is a short flight above a thin canyon less than a kilometer deep and slightly wider than that. It was, very reasonably, too small to comfortably fly through at Mach 5, so almost a kilometer per second, especially in the thin atmosphere of Tau Ceti f.

It takes us slightly more than half an hour from then to reach the feet of a massive mountain range stretching form one end of the horizon to another. It is massive, as everything on this planet seems to be, and built out of different kind of stone than the desert. The mountains are literally claret in color, supposedly from large amount of iron in the volcanic stone making up most of the range. And I have to say they make an impression with the morning sun shining from our side and illuminating it to an almost bloody red.

After flying past the volcanoes making up most of the peaks I finally see my first plant on this planet. This continent seems to be built from three continental plates pressing into each other, with the desert one mostly flat, and the two other one not really. The one that matters, where Lush Valley and Plains lie, is slanted slightly in the direction of the ocean, making the land on the other side of the stony mountains look kinda like a massive, irregular comb covered in something I assume to be small dark red plants, but I can't recognize at all. Definitely nothing like those we had on Gaia.

And here we are now, flying along one of the valleys with a steep volcano jutting out of one of comb's teeth on our left side. The colony is supposedly further away from the mountain range, almost by the other coast, and I can't see it yet cause it's still pretty damn far away. What I can see is the absolutely massive space lift, which looks deceptively similar to the one on Gaia, just that it's much larger at first glance. Makes sense with larger planet. It must have been a monumental investment, because building structure of that size becomes exponentially harder with planet's size.

There's nothing really interesting though, not counting the odd volcano I can see. Oh, this one has some lava flowing down it's slope. It's not even close to an eruption though, more like these volcanoes in the oceans that are five times wider than they are tall. This one is not that flat, but it's still more leakage than any explosion. Maybe it's somehow controlled not to explode? Hm.

"Letty?" I ask curiously.

"Yeah?" She turns to me with raised eyebrows, waiting for the question.

"I was wondering, how hot is it inside a volcano?"

"Huh? Ah, um, no idea." My girlfriend replies after a moment of confusion. "I mean. If we're talking about the volcano itself, then probably around a thousand degrees Celsius, though it varies. One point five if we're talking about the magma chamber underneath."

"Hm, that's not much." I muse.

"Yeah, kinda too cold for a bath." Letty comments dryly and I snort in response, glancing at her to see an amused smile on her lips.

"Honestly though, that's not a bad idea." I mutter. "I mean, it's not like this tempereature would hurt me, and it would certainly be a novel experience."

"Mmm, I'll need to check how temperature resistant I am." Letty smiles widely. "If it's good enough, I'm not against a lava bath. We'd need to find an open volcano though, which could be troublesome."

"Mmm, yeah. Let's check it out if we have time later." I poke my girlfriend.

"Mhm." She nods and pokes me back. "For now we're going to land in Homestead."

"Homestead?" I ask, looking at her with a raised eyebrow. "Sounds modern."

"Well, I blame the isolation of the people. This colony saw its first human visitors almost three hundred years after it's been established, so it's a pretty damn long while. And even now there are very few visitors because most people don't really know about it." Letty explains.

"Second Colonial Age, huh? Made humans regress in information exchange." I mutter.

After the Mechanical War ravaged Sol, Earth became uninhabitable for a long while and people were forced to look for new places to live. Wormholes discovered shortly after that provided suitable opportunities, unlike the other planets and moons of the solar system, which were either kind of habitable if you squinted hard and already colonized or completely uninhabitable. Both being rather bad for refugees and exiles.

So after making good use of wormholes, in the short span of twenty or so years, though records are slightly inconsistent in this matter, twelve star systems were colonized by various groups, marking the beginning of the Second Colonial Age. Some people claim it hasn't ended yet, and some say we're now in the galactic expansion era. Well, VOW is gonna really shake that, I guess? I wonder how it's going to work with multiple planets... well, not like it matters now.

The point is that FTL Network has only been created after the Second Colonial Age began, and it wasn't widely available till the beginning of twenty seventh century when a special project to connect all known colonized systems was launched. So some more than a hundred and fifty years ago.

"Yeah, the colonists who came here looking for a suitable exoplanet supposedly thought they discovered aliens and made a huge ruckus only to learn there are normal humans here. Well, biocyborgs if we're being technical, but they didn't know it." She says with an amused smile. "Anyway, yes, Homestead, or simply City. Locals use either. As modern as it sounds, it's the only thing you could call a city on this planet. In reality it's more of a loose collection of smaller and larger buildings, and it's where all but five percent of the population lives. The rest is either on top of the lift or strewn around the planet."

"Mhm. You said you had acquaintances among people you've met on different planets, right?" I ask and see her nod slowly.

"Yeah, though we're not going to visit any of them." She makes something between an uncertain expression and displeased frown. "I don't know any of them nearly enough to call them friends, unlike what some probably think. Normally I might have dropped by because of my engineering, but I haven't been doing anything for a long while, so I've no reason to meet them."

"Hm, I see." I nod.

It makes me a little... I don't know actually. Not really sad or anything, but I kind of expected Letty to drag me to meet someone here. Maybe show me of. Heh. But, well, not like I'm complaining. Certainly not about having Letty only to myself for an entire thirty one hour long day and most of the twenty two hour long night. I checked after she said that fifty hours is almost a whole solar day.

"Actually, I meant to ask but kept getting derailed, do you want to go eat somewhere? Normally it would be a given, but with both of us not needing it..." My girlfriend asks and her voice trails voice trails off uncertainly.

"Sure, I'd like it." I nod my head with a smile. "If there's a place you wanna show me, then gladly."

"Alright~, then we've the course set." She says melodically and leans back in her seat, then looks at me with a grin. "Do you want to try flying a bit?"

"Nah. Not now." I reply without hesitation, making her eyebrows float up, and shift myself to her seat. "I wanna cuddle."

"...You're awfully cuddly, you know that?" She asks with amusement and mock annoyance, wrapping her arm around my waist and pulling me up a bit.

"Yup." I poke her side, making her twist to the side with a silly grin. "I noticed that I kinda have two states. Active state when I find something exciting or interesting, and passive state when I'm just thinking. Meditative state, if you'd prefer." I explain, snuggling up to her and pressing my head to her chest. "And yeah, and cuddling. Best to think when I'm close to you." I mumble.

...

"This is private jet "Black Needle". Requesting clearance for landing in Homestead."

"Whut?" I grumble quietly, raising my head after hearing a voice above me, and I realize it's been Letty speaking. Who I'm almost laying on right now. Oh.

"Permission granted. Sending location vector." Comes another inorganic voice from the speakers.

Ah, okah. I lazily raise up from my position, noticing the distinct pull indicating the jet is slowing down, and sit on my seat properly. I still don't let go of Letty though, and look at the screen to see where we are. And we are in a foreign place that immediately wakes my brain up and makes me perk up in attention.

First thing I notice is that we're flying much slower and at lower attitude than before, because the trees... oh wait a moment. There are trees here. Pretty small from what I see, but they are definitely trees with brown bark and dark red leaves splayed in a blanket. They are also distinctly different from the plants I saw before, though their color is the same.

The second fact I pay attention to is the structure of the land, which is a lot different than the comb earlier. It's mostly flat, though slightly wavy if I look closely, with a few lone hills visible in the distance and a moderately large river flowing under our course.

"Did I wake you? Sorry about that. We are about a hundred kilometers from Homestead, where the restricted zone starts. We'll be landing in five minutes or so." Letty tells me, glancing with a smirk to the side at my probably sleepy face.

Did I sleep? No, I didn't really, but it felt like it. My mind was sorta drifting around different topics... Hm. Mostly connected to my talk with Shiva. I'll need to ask her about that next time I have the chance. I've been doing that quite often recently, and I don't think it's bad, but better be sure. Who knows if it doesn't have any side effects I'm not aware of.

"Alright, that's no problem." I nod my head, remembering to reply to my girlfriend, and look at the screen searching for buildings that should already be visible with the thin atmosphere and large surface curvature of Tau Ceti f. And indeed it is.

I quickly spot the space lift, of course, though that was visible since a long while ago, but now I can also make out its vaguely triangular base and the outline of the buildings around it. Though I can't see the ground yet.

Sharpening my eyesight shows me that the buildings are rather plain, built out of some white material and decorated in individual colors and patterns, but look modern and well maintained with their slightly rounded shapes and spotless walls.

Another thing I realize only after a while is that our more immediate surroundings are dotted with quite a lot of smaller buildings in the same style and the forest is cut into pieces by wide roads. There are no fields though, something I half-expected, but I guess they are either on the other side closer to the ocean or simply concentrated in another location. Unless... hm.

"Are there fields here, Letty?" I ask the very reliable source of information on my side.

"Hm? No, not really." She shakes her head against my expectations. "Would be if you counted the artificial plantations as fields, but they don't exactly grow plants."

"What do you mean?" What do they grow then? Surely not animals.

"It's... a bit hard to explain to someone unfamiliar with it." Letty begins uncertainly, but a moment later starts speaking. "Essentially what they have is a series of devices, which look kinda like huge metallic plants by the way, that convert received material into organics using absorbed sunlight. Those are either eaten by themselves or further processed into more, um, conventional food. It's another oddity here that's only natural for locals but can be really baffling for outsiders."

"...Yeah, I can see that." I nod slowly. Makes me wonder what food Letty wants me to eat, but I'm certainly not going to ask and spoil the surprise now. "I remember there was something similar on Gaia, but all they were making this way were rations." And they were pretty damn far from being tasty.

"Yeah, here almost everything is grown this way. But that's mostly because the soil isn't suitable to grow anything for consumption. All the trees and plants you saw are thriving only because they were genetically engineered to survive in this environment, but they are completely inedible. There is almost five percent iron in them, I think." She looks at me with a wry smile.

"Wow." I do my best impression of being impressed. "That's a lot. They pull it out of the soil?"

"Yeah." Letty nods and perks up slightly. "Actually, it's a pretty amazing thing here, you know? They pull almost all the iron out of the soil and are later harvested for it."

"Huh?"

"Yup." My girlfriend nods again enthusiastically. "Mom told me it was accident when they were trying to create plants that would survive in this environment. They were absorbing a lot of iron, and someone had an idea to harvest them for that iron. Now they no longer dig into the ground for iron, but extract it from those plants."

"Damn." I mutter. "That's like, if you told that to any random person on Gaia, they would think you're crazy."

"Centuries long isolation." She shrugs. "It's the same as it was on ancient Earth, just that on a greater scale."

"...Yeah." I mutter, looking forward and thinking a bit till I realize I can see Homestead in all it's glory.

And what glory it is. This place at first glance looks absolutely amazing. Simply incomparable to the cramped arcologies on Gaia in so many ways I'm not sure where to focus my eyes.

First thing is that the whole city is built not on the ground, but above the ground. Every single building and road is supported by beams, which are firmly embedded into solid blocks on a large triangular mesh on the ground, and at first glance they can be moved about. Actually, looking at it now, majority of buildings here are built on the base of hexagons rounded on the edges, which is a novelty in itself.

Then another thing is that the whole place is... surprisingly empty. In a good way. On Gaia, parks were a rarity because of very little available space, and most buildings were tens or even hundreds of meters tall. Here it's hard to find a building that doesn't have a plot the same size next to it, filled with plants, recreational devices, benches, fountains, or a whole lot of other things, some of which I don't even recognize. If you removed all of that, you would end up with... maybe fourth of the surface actually occupied by plots, much less by buildings themselves.

Add to that the fact that most buildings on the edges are smaller than my home on Gaia was, and it's a completely foreign place. Not all are smaller though, because while the smallest hexagons have around ten meters across, and there are some even smaller triangles, the largest of them are tens of times larger than that. In each dimension.

I'm not counting the space lift, of course, cause its base easily has kilometers in width, but I can spot some buildings next to it that at first glance are massive hexagonal columns that have well over a hundred meters on each side and at least the same in height. And the peculiar thing is that there seems to be absolutely no rule to that, with things like a row of small building directly next to a giant a common sight.

We arrive above the city as I'm thinking idly and another thing I immediately notice is that there's very little people going around. I mean, duh, it's not a surprise, but I can't help being drawn to the fact that the streets are practically empty. The first person I spot is a young boy in casual clothes, probably around ten years old, standing on the road and gaping at the jet with wide open mouth. Heh.

"We'll be landing in a public spot near the space lift." Letty says and I turn to her with raised eyebrows. "We could go directly to the... um, restaurant, let's say, but the ports are exclusively for the clients, and we'll be staying for a longer while. It's not far away either way."

"Not like it matters much." I mutter with a wry smile. "I'm pretty sure I could run as fast as an ordinary hoverer without any magic."

"Mmm, yeah." My girlfriend nods. "Oh, look to the right?" She perks up suddenly and I quickly do as she says.

The first thing I see is a plain wall of a particularly large and high hexagon we're flying next to, but a moment later the view opens up and I see a large open space... mostly open. There are six massive hexagonal platforms in a circle, each consisting only of a thin frame on four sides with a hole pointed outwards, plus six triangles filling the inside with a massive robotic arm each.

...Don't tell me that's what it is.

I glance at Letty with eyebrows raised in disbelief and she smirks cheekily.

"Those are public fabricators. They use those huge arms to build and are assisted by nanobots." She explains as the jet speeds beside them, and I nod in confirmation. Exactly what I thought. "Anyone can use them and build their own plots. That's how the hexagons are called."

"Plots? Alright." Subconsciously dubbed them the same. "This is all pretty... unreal, honestly. Why is it built this way?" I ask curiously.

"The plots can be easily moved, and the grid is made out of a monomolecular mesh, which makes it incredibly durable. Attached to the lift it's all virtually immovable. It protects from earthquakes, which are not rare here, and it offers a lot of freedom in how you want to build." Letty says. "Plus it's convenience. If someone needs more space, it's usually enough to post a notice and everyone can move their plots a few numbers to the side. It's all dynamic. Ah, numbers mean numbers on the grid, similar to coordinates."

Damn, that's... kinda incredible, in a way. Someone might question if that's worth the cost and effort, but it would solve so many problems we had in arcologies on Gaia that it's hard to count them all. Just the most basic are things like very difficult dismantling processes of old buildings, since it's pretty damn important to remove a building without causing a domino effect inside an arcology, or that many older streets and passages were too narrow to comfortably fly into them using the newest vehicles.

"And here's the port. We'll be landing here." Letty says and I see she has her arm pointed to the front and left.

As I look there, I notice that we're already flying very slowly, but what my eyes are drawn to is an incredibly massive, mostly empty triangular grid at the foot of the space lift, filled with holes of various sizes, with a multitude of robotic arms around them and on empty ports, and obviously with vehicles either resting in the ports or held in them by the arms if they aren't made to stand on their own. There are few of those though.

Most of them are jets and hoverers, but there are some larger ones as well, and I have to say I've never seen more diverse ships in my life. Letty's matte black, triangular jet is pretty ordinary comparing to how most of those look. Not only in shape, even if there are some that look almost ridiculous, but more so in color.

There are very few that have abstract patterns on them, though there is still one or two, but having the paint done in three or more, often vibrant colors isn't anything special. It's almost like a custom, or like fashion here, I think, because more than two thirds of the ships are white with simplistic designs in various vibrant colors, often contrasting with each other. The rest is either black with similar designs, just in more subdued colors, or completely original.

And I have to say that a part of me isn't surprised by that. Centuries long isolation, huh? It's not like they need any camouflaging colors or anything, not to mention that well over half of the vehicles here are hoverers, which I would bet never left this planet.

I watch as my girlfriend flies the jet into one small empty port on the side, the same a little map on a display shows, and gently lowers it till it rests on the ground on three thin legs. I hear and see as the engines completely shut down, and Letty ever so slightly leans back for a moment, then shuts down the display and stands up, looking at me with a smile.

"That's a date, right?" I poke her side with a grin as I stand up and she twists her body with a smile, trying to avoid my sharp nail.

"Yup, that's a date~!" She replies melodically as the door of the jet opens and extends her arm to me. "Come, my Demoness." She says with a serious face.

"Lead the way, my goddess." I reply, fighting the smile creeping up my lips, taking her hand and rotating it till our fingers are interlocked. And our eyes.

I give her a small kiss to her lips she happily reciprocates, and we walk down the little set of stairs. I see in my magic sense as the door to the jet closes and the stairs retract, and I follow Letty leisurely to where she is leading me with a small, happy smile.