> I have no idea, but it is odd. Do we keep records on how many personnel the Maffiyir Company usually keeps in-system during a contest?
>
> -Intercepted transmission from Voices for Non-Citizens
My family and the Turners’ family had piled into our room, collapsing onto our mattress-strewn floor as Pointy put on a movie for the kids… kind of. With Cassie’s growing strength, the little turtle could do almost-unlimited video projection, and VHS cassettes were easy for her to gather video data from.
The audio data, encoded magnetically, wasn’t something she could easily scan. Instead, she’d been working on “dubbing” the movies as a hobby project in her spare time, guessing at what the characters would have said and synthesizing voices for them. The result was often very different from the original dialogue, but that added to the entertainment value in some ways. The kids might shout and criticize when a favorite character replaced a line they remembered with something else, but they laughed as they did so. And Pointy could always go for something more niche if she didn’t want commentary from the crowd. The old Disney princess movies we’d found on VHS were things some of the kids had seen, but Pointy could freestyle as much as she liked on Fern Gully or The Great Mouse Detective unless she showed them to a bigger crowd of all the Fort Autumn kids... and even then, the kids who were familiar with the originals weren't usually familiar enough to do more than quietly ask questions like "Why is Basil's voice so squeaky now?" Generally. There was one time that her adaptation of The Iron Giant went too far off-script and triggered an all-out crying breakdown from a five-year-old who'd apparently watched it on repeat the month before the world went to hell.
Priya and I had worked together to give her a line-by-line recitation on The Care Bears Movie II, so that one was pretty much perfect. The voices were slightly different, but Priya and I had coached her until they were quite close. There were also a few lines Priya had remembered differently than me - wrongly, in my opinion, but very confidently - and I’d begrudgingly acceded to her recollection. It wasn't that I thought she was right, but... she’d owned more Care Bears toys. I could stomach a few out-of-place lines for the sake of our friendship.
Today, though, Pointy was going with a classic: Cinderella.
I sat down, leaning against Vince and nodding to George, who was sitting with his arm around Priya. “Are we still on-track for your projections?”
“I think so. It really depends on how common those new Advanced Shops are and how much people spend on them. The amount of Money we earn each week is only going up a little bit, so new costs could really slow us down. Assuming they’re not too common… humanity will own 75% of Earth’s ocean in a little over two months, and then we can finish up on purchasing the land in about three more weeks.”
“Hm… so our odds of finishing before Christmas aren’t good.”
George laughed. “Not with Thanksgiving coming up in a few days here. Not that we’re going to have a big celebration for that…”
“At least we don’t have to travel,” Vince said, bumping up against me.
I raised an eyebrow. “You can’t tell me you’d prefer ravening monsters to extended family.”
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Vince put a hand to his mouth, as if considering it. Then he grinned and shook his head. “Nah. Just trying to look on the bright side”
“We should try to get something fun together for Thanksgiving, though,” I said.
Priya leaned over and patted my hand, her scaled palm cool against my skin. “Let me worry about that. You have enough on your plate.”
I smiled at her gratefully. “I honestly don’t know what we’d do without you.”
Cassie pushed herself up on her elbows and twisted to glare at me from her spot lying on her stomach on the floor ahead. Her voice was thick with offended disapproval: “Mommy, be quiet! We are watching the movie.”
“Sorry,” I told her, forming my face into a contrite expression until Cassie returned her focus to the film. The moment she looked away, my face broke into a grin.
“That little stinker,” Vince breathed as Priya muffled giggles.
“Shh!” I said.
We sat together, resting quietly for about an hour, with the movie finishing fifteen minutes before we expected a new Threat. It left us just enough time to double-check everyone’s gear, make sure all the kids took the time to use the restroom, and head up to the Tower.
Did I think they would send two burrowing Threats at us in a row? No.
But the fact that they’d sent even one made me question the safety of the Quarry.
As long as we knew what was coming, the Quarry was fine. The openings in our vents were too small for hellbees or night leeches to manage. The ramp in and out had multiple layers of defenses against smaller monsters. The biggest danger came from the burrowing monsters spawned by the previous Threat, but those were usually killed before they could leave the hive. When they weren’t, they ran into traps that had been set below and around, and we still had people with sensory augments on the lookout for them 24/7. It wasn’t perfectly safe, but it was as close as anywhere on Earth got.
The trouble was that a new Threat was due. We didn’t know what it would be capable of, but “something big” was a safe bet, and if it turned out to be something that started earthquakes or dropped out of the sky like a meteor, I’d rather be aboveground where we could see it coming and potentially dodge.
Being out in the open exposed us to other dangers the Quarry would have protected us from, but at least we'd have a chance to see those coming. With all the sensory augments amongst my loved ones and my bodyguards, we should see almost anything coming. I trusted us to be able to react to known dangers.
It was the unknown that scared me.
Several tons of stone being dropped on our heads might not be lethal, especially with all the stoneshapers on hand and ready to revert any damage, but... it might be. At a bare minimum, it would pin us down and leave us helpless until we were rescued.
Neither Ariel nor I liked the sound of that.
“Ten seconds,” said Pointy softly.
Force Shields snapped into place in the gaps between the walls and ceiling of the Tower. They were double-layered on the side closest to the nearby Pylon, but every approach was covered. My bodyguards weren’t leaving anything to chance.
As the final second ticked away, I felt the ground beneath me tremble. “They are trying earthquakes!” I snapped, feeling vindicated.
Gavin grabbed my hand, his body hunched in, looking almost pained as he pointed toward the Pylon. “I… I don’t think so, Mommy. There’s something out there. Something really big.”