Nora and Simon sat at a polished maple table looking out a bay window to what looked like the Thames river in London, circa, 1.2 billion AD. Simon reached for the silver syrup container and poured more over his second plate of Pancakes.
Nora turned from the window and watched him spread the syrup with his fork before starting to cut a small triangle out of his stack of three. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you worked up an appetite.”
Simon smiled at her with a mouthful of food and then swallowed before answering, “I think I did, you’ve certainly polished off some hot-cakes yourself.”
Nora looked down to the destroyed remnants of her plate, “I guess I did as well.” She smiled at Simon as she took her plate to the sink of the apartment.
Simon sighed in contentment as he finished the last of his pancakes, “Was this the place you grew up in?
Nora nodded as she came back to the table and sat down, “It was, and it still exists, although it has gone through countless renovations. I keep it as my personal happy place in ‘vert. After all the centuries my parents worked together to put earth back together again they fell in love and decided to have a baby. They bought this place to raise me, and grew themselves biological bodies to have me the ‘original’ way.”
Simon nodded, “I knew plenty of people who went biological after the war, AI and Human alike, before having a family and after raising them went back to ‘vert.”
Nora sighed, “My parents divorced shortly before I joined SETI, they still talk from time to time but they’ve moved apart. But I’ll always have London.”
Simon put his hand on hers, “I’ll have to show you my place sometime.”
Nora grinned again, “We have work, and you have a job to do figuring out how to shut down our snoopers.”
Simon nodded and wiped his mouth with his napkin, “I’ll get right on it, meet you on the Unwavering Message?”
Nora reached out and held him before looking up and pecking him on the lips, “I’ll see you there, now let me go get changed.”
Simon grinned, “We’re in ‘vert, you can change instantly here.”
Nora nodded, “I can, but I have my morning ritual, now go get to work on our mutual problem while I keep our cover.”
———————-
The first contact team sat around two tables pushed together in The Unwavering Message’s forward lounge. Which Nigel has now having the crew call ten-forward, which he finds endlessly amusing. On such a small vessel, this was simply the best place to hold their daily meetings as even the Captain’s ready room was not large enough for them all to sit comfortably.
Captain Ra’Jinn poured cups of Impach for the team while Victoria continued to explain what Terrans did to entertain themselves. “Most people jump from guild to guild these days as they take interest in something. Some of us on the team are members of guilds right now, I believe Nigel is part of the model making guild, are you not?”
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Nigel nodded vigorously, “Yes, and due to my involvement with SETI I have been unable to aid them with the construction of the 1:1 model of The Unwavering Message. They tease me about it daily as they send me pictures of their progress.”
Nora finished a sip of her Impach, “I’m sure you do nothing in return, seeing as to we are supposed to be locked out of our guild attachments due to our obligations as Ambassadors?”
Nigel moved his head in a circular motion that everyone knew well, “Weeeeellll, I might have sent a single message to them stating the air register covers were upside down.”
Captain Ra’Jinn looked at the air register cover in ten-forward, “But the covers are symmetrical, it wouldn’t matter which way you put them up.”
Nigel snickered to himself, “I know, but it will drive them up the wall trying to figure out what I meant.”
Uhghea rolled her eyes, “Well, as much as I love seeing what nonsense Nigel has come up with, I have a dinner date with a certain Madkatz tonight. I’ll see you all in the morning.”
Nigel sighed and stood up holding his cane to the side, “I too must be going, your crew seems to love losing money to me in Regalas Captain.”
Victoria put down her Impach and stated, “Unlike a certain scoundrel in the room, I will not be taking advantage of your crew Captain, but I do have a prior engagement.”
As they said their goodbyes, Nora and Simon sat with Captain Ra’Jinn and XO Ta’Kinar. Nora sent Simon the tight beam message to shut down the UTL feed. Simon sent back confirmation before she spoke. “Captain, I would like to print a message for someone from the on board printer, how would I go about it?”
Captain Ra’Jinn sat down her cup, “Oh, may I ask who you would like to give a message to?”
Nora looked over to Simon, “It will be a private message to the Empress, one that she will want to keep to commemorate the occasion.”
Captain Ra’Jinn stood and said, “Come to my ready room.”
Simon re-instated the UTL feed while they walked from ten-forward to the Captain’s ready room. Once inside he once again shut off the feed.
Captain Ra’Jinn showed Nora her printer, Nora used Simon’s ship connection protocol to send her message to the printer, which printed a hard copy of her letter in a few short moments. As soon as it finished Nora picked up the paper and said, “Thank you Captain and placed the paper in the binder she had been carrying around the last few days.”
Captain Ra’Jinn nodded, “You’re quite welcome Ambassador, we should be docking at the royal shipyards at Le’Nerra tomorrow. From there we will take a shuttle to Enub itself and land in the capital city of Aer’Silar.
Nora nodded and Simon once again restarted the UTL feed. “Thank you for your time Captain, Simon and I must be going, we have plans for the night.”
Simon caught his breath, he didn’t expect Nora to make their relationship known already, but it was a good way to change the subject. “Um, yes, we’re having dinner at my place tonight.”
Captain Ra’Jinn smiled a knowing smile, “Ah, so you two have become a couple have you?”
Nora reached out and took Simon’s hand, “Yes, it’s happened quite suddenly, but these things often do. Good night Captain, we will see you in the morning.”
Nora led Simon out the door and they walked down the hall to the Ambassadorial suite where the others left their androids. Simon smiled all the way back, after all, he was getting to hold Nora’s hand.
They both sat at the small table and shut down, as soon as Simon re-appeared in his beach house and changed from his clothing requirements as Ambassador to something Nora seemed to like. The doorbell rang, and he sprinted over to open it, there Nora stood in an amazing blue shimming dress, “Did you miss me?” She asked with a little pout in her lips.
“So much!” Simon said as he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her into the house and shut the door.
________________
Deep within the void, millions of Dyson spheres opened to allow fleets to exit before closing once more to keep from losing valuable heat energy from the parent stars. If one were to begin to plot the point from the void to their destination, all points led to a single point in space. The fleets did not know what lay at this point, but they were tasked with a single mission, destroy any presence of the unclean, the heretic, the biological.