"I can't believe the engineers managed to fabricate every single one of the required spaceship pieces," said Lisa incredulously as she regarded a warehouse full of requested parts.

"Will they really work?" asked Dean. "A lot of them are made from dragonleaf and glass refined from Vast Desert's sand: doesn't sound very scientific."

Bath sighed. "AI Ninety-Seven specified that the parts be made out of unfamiliar mineral and plastic components. I personally intervened to change the physical properties of the dragonleaf to match, even going so far as to chemically combine the dragonleaf with fired glass." That had been a substantial challenge: Bath hadn't yet encountered any species that naturally integrated true glass, meaning that he didn't have the ability to manipulate or produce it.

Bath personally held a lot of hope for the dragonleaf-glass composite: it seemed to embody many of the qualities as the substance AI Ninety-Seven requested for many of the ship components. According to the encyclopedia, at least.

"So Lisa and the kursi are going to be delivering the materials?" Dean asked.

Lisa nodded. "With the assistance of twenty bear quasi-sapients."

Dean shook his head. "Twenty bears? Damn, I didn't realize that these ship parts were so heavy."

Bath gave him a look. "They aren't."

Dean frowned. "Then why..."

Lisa chuckled. "Dean, this is only one of five warehouses."

Dean shot her a confounded look. "Just how big is this ship that it can still travel through a typical gate?"

---

"So, everybody: The higher ups, a.k.a. the Knight, have told us to grab the bears and get over to the Egdelek Arc."

"Zhou," Ida began, her forehead creased. "When did we get bears?"

"We requested them," Zhou explained calmly.

"How?" Priscilla asked, leaning against Clarissa. "I thought we couldn't go back through the gate, or send signals?"

Zhou shrugged. "While we can't send anything back, we can still send signals."

Priscilla narrowed her eyes and gave Clarissa a look. The devilbat snorted and shook her wing.

"If you're curious, I can explain," Zhou said. "It's simple: a rigid object is held on both sides of one gate. While the object can only proceed further through the gate, it can be slid horizontally along the plane of the gate indefinitely. This horizontal sliding can generate messages."

"Kind of like Morse code, then," Priscilla muttered.

Lisa knew that everyone had been briefed two days ago about the Egdelek Arc and the "misconceptions" that AI Ninety-Seven held, such as that everyone that would be coming was a laborer/peon. Even so, she worried that people would botch the charade, especially if AI Ninety-Seven called people "fringespawn" in a disparaging tone.

Establishing that everybody was ready to go, Zhou led the kursi over to the edge of Jure where the ship pieces had been gathered for transport. The parts were currently arrayed atop a flat raft suspended on four wooden supports. Next to the raft lay twenty quasi-sapient bears, all of them giving the kursi inscrutable looks.

I haven't had much contact with the quasi bears, Lisa noted, eying the bears in genuine curiosity. Bath told me that he made them at the Alaskan city-seed outside of Juneau, but I didn't see them when I visited the city-seed on my "world tour" as COTD's ambassador. The bears were actually a rather late development: while slotting them in for one of the original sixteen quasi-sapient species from the beginning, Bath had waited to create them. He told Lisa a few reasons for this choice, the main ones being that they were difficult to transport (he would need to move his quasi precursors from the northern United States to Basalith in Virginia) and that they had enormous appetites.

Zhou walked over to the contingent of bears, creating a thin dragonleaf tether between himself and the bear heading the group.

"She says they're prepared to set out," he said, looking back, a queer expression on his face. "As soon as we harness them up, we can remove the supports and set out."

Harnessing the bears was simple: as the twenty bears arranged themselves in a 5x4 matrix, the kursi manipulated fronds of dragonleaf throughout the raft and around the bears.

This raft is going to splinter unless these bears move in perfect unison, Lisa thought nervously. Though I suppose they must be able to do so, otherwise they wouldn't be carrying the raft on their backs.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Sure enough, when the bears began to run across the desert, the raft split into twelve pieces.

"What...?" Lisa muttered, watching the carnage. Thankfully, the bears had only taken five steps and hadn't been going very fast, so all the parts appeared undamaged. However, why did they even try this plan if it was destined to fail?

"Thicket says that the problem was the sand," Zhou announced, relaying the words of the lead bear. "A few bears tripped and couldn't get a good foothold."

"Why don't we just have them pull the raft?" Ida suggested. "After we reconstruct it, of course."

Zhou looked back to Thicket. "She says they can do it better if they just carry the raft on their backs."

"Will it work this next time?" Khalid asked, sitting down in the sand. "It's hot." The implication being that he didn't want to wait an hour for the bears to figure everything out.

Priscilla gave him a disgusted look. "You always complain about the weather...and yet you're the one who spent most of his life in a desert."

"Thicket says that they just need five minutes to run around on the sand," Zhou said, cutting them off. "So, we'll wait here for five minutes. Do whatever."

Thicket led the rest of the bears out of the kursi's line of site. Sure enough, five minutes later, the bears returned. Lisa thought that the bears looked clumsy, their bodies seeming to shake with each lumbering step. But they're one of Bath's creations, she thought, and with him, appearances can be deceiving.

"Alright guys, let's get the bears lined up and fastened in." Zhou directed the kursi to raft, Zhou having led the kursi to repair it in the five-minute interim. "Just like before. Thicket says to maybe make some of the restraints a little looser, though."

Lisa admired the three or so bears she was tasked with strapping in. She had never seen bears outside of zoos, and never at a distance below fifty feet away. They look a little goofy, she thought as she regarded the bears' large heads and sagging muzzles, but their claws look like they could tear me to pieces. While she felt more than confident in her ability to defend herself, if she was asleep, or completely incapacitated...something about the sharpness of those claws, the slabs of muscle on the bears' shoulders, made her more on edge than the pointed teeth of quasi wolves or the razor-like claws of the jerboa.

After growing knots of dragonleaf around the bears, Lisa stepped back to Zhou Wang's position and waited for the others. Once all the bears were situated, Zhou nodded, saying, "Okay, whenever you're ready."

The bear at the head of the formation, apparently Thicket (though Lisa had trouble telling any of the bear quasies apart), grunted. The other nineteen bears grunted back, and they all set off.

In the wrong direction.

But at least they're moving in sync, Lisa observed, lips upturned into a smile. She glanced at Zhou. Should we...?

"Uh," he began, scratching his head as the bears disappeared into the horizon. "Eyrin, take Clarissa and tell 'em to turn around."

Clarissa sighed, while Eyrin replied, "Of course." He leapt up onto Clarissa's back and directed her up into the air in the general direction of the bears.

"Zhou, is he going to be all right?" Lisa asked. "Does he have his land-shaper boons?"

Zhou waved a hand. "He has everything besides two of the teaching boons and the cooking boons."

Lisa nodded. He's been moving fast.

Three minutes passed before Eyrin returned, the bears running behind him. This entire setup is so bizarre, Lisa thought, shaking her head. Twenty bears with a giant raft packed with spaceship parts supported on their backs. Eyrin touched Clarissa down next to the kursi, somewhat out of breath.

"Nice," Zhou said. "They give you a hard time?"

"I was shouting to them," he explained, trying to conceal his heavy breathing, "And they could not hear me, even using the director boons. I even had Clarissa shout to them." He glanced at her, sighing.

"Hey, I tried," she snorted.

"I never said otherwise," Eyrin stated, blinking twice. "As a last resort, I directed Clarissa to fly next to Thicket and make a dragonleaf tether." Clarissa grimaced, shaking her head slightly. "This time, the bears are going to follow us," Eyrin explained.

Zhou winced. "Oh, you tethered with Thicket?"

Eyrin's skin darkened. "Why?"

Zhou chuckled and shook his head. "Well, you probably know. Whatever."

Lisa looked first at Eyrin, then at Zhou, then to Clarissa. I certainly didn't have a problem tethering to any of the bears I was strapping in, Lisa thought. I just told them to move their paws and adjust their posture, and they responded with simple affirmatives. Nothing notable.

Clarissa noticed her gaze and gave her a small shrug. By this time, however, Zhou was just beginning to run, leading the other kursi with him towards the Arc.

Because the bears moved comparatively slow, the group arrived at the Arc in six hours. By this time, everyone was somewhat put out by the oppressive heat of Vast Desert, despite any boons and bodily enhancements that increased their comfort. The kursi were looking jealously at Khalid's head wrap, and a few were even eying Eyrin's veil for its sand-deterring properties.

Upon arrival, Zhou directed the bears to the left of the hole and led the kursi in erecting a new set of four supports for the raft and freeing the bears from their dragonleaf bonds. In a matter of minutes, the bears were on their way back to Vast Desert and the kursi were left alone with a vast collection of ship parts.

"Well," Zhou said, pacing the perimeter of the raft. "Everyone, take three small pieces, two medium pieces, or a large piece each, then jump down the shaft and talk to the robot."

Lisa cleared her throat, wishing she'd brought water. "Zhou, we're supposed to say something specific to the robot, right?"

He smiled. "Yes, don't you remember?"

Lisa felt like slapping her hand across her forehead. "Shouldn't we go over it once to make sure everyone remembers?"

Zhou's smile disappeared, an uncharacteristic iciness coming over his features. He regarded the kursi present, saying, "If anyone ruins this, Lepochim will destroy you." Leaving everyone stunned, he leaned over and grabbed a particularly large part, proceeding to jump down into the shaft.

He is 299 years old, Lisa thought. I'm almost more comfortable with him being icy and standoffish than his typical happy-go-lucky "bro" self.

She and the other kursi grabbed parts near the edge of the raft, jumping down the hole in quick succession. Soon, everyone was standing in the room with the robot, Zhou clearly having waited for everyone else to arrive before proceeding.

He smiled at them, then said, "Alright: Eyrin's going first."