The storm thundered across the city, lighting flashing and booming, rain driving hard against the crysteel windows, the wind howling through the streets, the clouds low and dark.
Nakteti stood on the balcony of the suite she had been allocated, the safety-fields dialed down enough to let some wind and rain through. She wasn't at risk of being thrown from the balcony by the wind or being drowned by the rain but she could still feel the savagery of the storm somewhat. She knew that most beings would take shelter, hide from such furious nature, but she wanted to experience, as much as she could, what humans had put up with from their earliest days.
She wanted, no, she needed to understand the humans. In the same way her people had learned about the Lanaktallans and their Unified Civilized Species Councils, she wanted to learn about the humans. Both were the dominant species in their sector of the galactic arm spur but they both approached everything from such different angles.
A Lanaktallan's first impulse was to preserve resources for future generations, to make sure that everyone got their fair share of the resources of a newly discovered planet.
A humans first instinct was to alter their environment or themselves to survive.
She had watched the Tri-Vid, found out she could look up educational or entertainment programs and order them to either rent for a brief period of time or 'buy' the ability to watch it when she wanted for the rest of her life.
The more she watched, the more she understood.
Human infants, from the moment they were born, looked for their mother, could grasp tightly to things, and were capable of vocalizing distress or need. They were highly physical and their mental faculties started developing quickly.
Human children progressed so rapidly Nakteti had double-checked several times.
Over and over she saw proof that humans were capable of multiple actions at once. The most incredible she saw was a video of small children patting their own heads while rubbing their stomachs and singing a song. Some of the children got so excited they jumped up and down while performing the actions.
That had made her stare. She tried repeating it, a little game that small human children played, and could not manage to do any two of the three.
Their societies could be just as confusing. She was shocked to find out that, for the most part, the Terran Confederacy did not care how a planet or alliance was run. The Confederacy was more a mutual defense/trade agreement/technology sharing compact than an actual government. Individual planets and small groups of 'system states' were left alone.
The Terran Confederacy did not even get involved with rebellions against a planetary government the majority of the time, considering it an internal matter.
Then there was space exploration.
Losing their friends had made a deep, lasting impact. The universe was not a source of resources for the good of all, like to the Lanaktallans, to humans the universe was a cold, malevolent entity that would take away everything and leave you dying and alone, gasping for air it held just beyond reach.
The Lanaktallans looked at every technological breakthrough or scientific research discovery on how it would benefit or put in harm's way every single member of their society. Humans looked at each of them as 'how will this protect/benefit/assist us' and then adapted it to do just that.
Eventually, it had led her to looking up a government office. Which led her to speaking to a full crafted AI, who had recognized her because it had bought a VR version of her stuffy for its two 'child-hashes' to play with.
With the AI's help, Weaver-3381, she had looked at a vast catalogue of potential purchases, adding requirements, each time worried that it would prohibit her from finding what she wanted. After nearly an hour of searching, she had found, with Weaver-3381's help, exactly what she had been looking for.
A planet.
The survey crew had gone through the system, ran probes, done cartography, and jumped out. It had been registered, and, to Nakteti's shock, put up for sale.
Weaver-3381 had helped her fill out the paperwork she needed as a 'refugee of a species in danger', helped her register her corporation with the Terran Confederacy, had helped her fill out her paperwork as the 'recipient of a Precursor Extinction Assault', and then helped her select all kinds of colony options. She had contacted the Sweet's computer and downloaded the technical specifications and blueprints of the Boom or Bust and added that to the paperwork. She had com-linked her crew members and shown them everything, and despite their disbelief they were still hopeful, and made changes based on their suggestions and desires. Weaver-3381 had assisted the whole way, getting excited over the habitation sections and expansions.
Then she had checked her account, holding her breath.
She'd had the money.
She couldn't believe it. A simple set of stuffys, scale model ships, including the Boom or Bust (with or without detachable colony section action) and tiny little model figurines of her crew and people, and she could barely watch her credit balance without hyperventilating.
Nakteti had enough money to buy a star system, an updated Boom or Bust with Terran civilian technology, contract vessels to help move any of her people willing to come to the new colony, and have enough left over to pay for the repairs to the It Tastes Sweet as well as her crew's medical needs.
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She had finished everything and moved out to the balcony to watch the storm.
The wind and rain felt like a representation of how she felt when she got caught up in the Terran Confederacy.
There was so much energy around her. Even now, late at night, she could look down and, with the terrace's auto-focus feature in the protective fields, see people moving through the streets, shopping in stores, talking with one another in dining establishments.
Even with their extensive lifespans humans were as active as someone who had only a few days to live and wanted to experience as much as possible.
It taught us that the universe would take everything from us if it could, she heard Major Carnight's voice again as she stood in the wind and rain with her eyes closed.
The storm, strangely enough, was easing her distress rather than increasing it. The feel of the wind ruffling her wet fur, the feel of the thunder rumbling through her, the cold wet rain, all combined to make her feel, well, grounded.
She was holding onto the railing with all four hands, reaching forward with first one foot then the other, switching back and forth, and holding onto the metal rods that made up the balcony safety fence. The safety railing felt solid, she'd found out it something called duralloy, nearly unbreakable and used in most human construction. The solid feeling made it so that holding onto it made her feel anchored to the world. Safe and secure in a strange way.
Nakteti thought about the Tri-Vid programs she'd watched, about colony disasters in Terran history. They had suffered Precursor attacks that had wiped out entire colonies, they responded by allowing colony forces to have naval forces and planetary defense forces strong enough to, at the very least, hold off a Precursor till nearby systems could rally around the attacked. It wasn't mandatory, you could take the risk if you wanted to. Nakteti knew that the Lanaktallans would have made it mandatory and just charged the species for the Unified Military Forces presence.
That was the big difference between the Lanaktallans and the humans. You didn't have to have anything. She could have started the colony by just having her and her crew dropped off on the planet with a smile and a pair of modesty shorts each, not even a single nano-forge. The Lanaktallan had lists and lists of what was required, all expensive, all charged to the entire species.
The differences were simple, but startling in their effects.
She had grown to maturity in a system that removed choice and personal responsibility to replace it with the various Councils.
Terrans basically went: "Don't cry to me if you didn't take my advice and got eaten."
The thunder boomed from a lightning strike less than a mile away, pulling her thoughts away from the gloomy track of how the Lanaktallans removed any chance of success by claiming to have your best interests at heart. Pulled her from wondering how different things would be for her people if it had been the Terrans who found them first.
She sighed, staring at the night sky. She was from further 'up' that galactic spur, her night sky had more stars in it, but for some reason the sky looked breath-taking to her.
Her datalink pinged and she checked it. It was Major Carnight, letting her know that he was standing slightly behind her.
"I am just watching the storm," Nakteti said.
"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.