“Hello, Nick.”
Nick looked up from where he had been trying and failing to get some sleep. “Hello, Petra. What's up?”
“I have located a deposit including element 53. I will retrieve a sample in 43 minutes 17 seconds.”
Nick thought back about what they needed element 53 for. “Is this for the soup? Um, clarifying: Can you make soup now?”
“No.”
Nick stopped and made himself think carefully. “In an hour, will you be able to make soup?”
“Yes.”
“YES!”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, Petra.”
“You're welcome, Nick.”
It was just parroting, but Petra was getting good at faking a conversation sometimes.
An hour later, Petra was synthesizing a can of chicken noodle soup, creating it hot as it poured into a stone bowl. Nick grabbed his spork, took a sip, and wiped his eyes. “Best damned soup I've ever tasted,” he said brokenly. He said nothing else until he had finished off the serving.
After that, he answered a few of Petra's questions, then lay back down and slept well for the first time in a while.
* *
The next day (depending on how you measured it) Nick found that he was feeling a lot better, physically, than he had in ages. I must have really needed something in the soup, he mused. Either that, or my body is just grateful for anything that makes it poop at a reasonable pace.
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Once the chicken noodle soup was on the menu, Petra had gotten flexible enough to identify and separate out parts of the soup. Nick taught her the words for carrots, potatoes, peas, noodles, broth, and so on. So Petra was trying out variations.
Carrots in chicken broth. Peas in chicken broth. Peas and noodles. Tuna in chicken broth. Tuna and carrots. It was just such a blessed relief to have a little variety. It wasn't much longer until the creamy tomato soup joined the menu, allowing for more combinations.
Nick did have to tell Petra never to put potato chips in chicken broth again, though. That was just tragic.
Petra apparently had figured out that he needed a steady supply of water to stay alive, do his business, wash, and so on. The solution was simple: Petra built a dehumidifier that collected water from the perpetually humid air. She had an entire chamber as a reservoir. Given that she'd already gone that far, Nick drew up designs for another chamber to hold a swimming pool. He assigned it a very low priority, though. Just about anything Petra considered a good idea would get done first.
Every time Nick surfaced, the solar farm was more impressive. Petra kept adding more panels. Also, all the panels were mounted and automatically tracked the Death Star across the sky to maximize energy production. She now had enough power to run Tunnel Rats and Masons around the clock, so the dungeon kept expanding.
Nick didn't really need all this space, and he mostly stayed on Levels 2 and 3. But he kept finding things he wanted to make that needed resources they didn't have enough of yet. So Petra needed to keep prospecting farther and farther, and deeper and deeper into the planet. She had searching for elements 90 and 92 as an ongoing goal. Nick wasn't sure what those were, but she wanted them for a different kind of power plant.
Eventually, Petra made the swimming pool, and it immediately became Nick's favorite place to be. He didn't like the condition his body had been getting to, and now that he had a somewhat varied diet and exercised regularly, he started feeling better.
He even started trying to figure out how he could shave. Unfortunately, he didn't know exactly how an electric razor worked. But he figured a good sign of him being civilized was finding a way to lose his crazy mountain man beard and be clean-shaven again.
Everywhere he turned, there were little challenges or quests. He was getting bored with them, day after day, and he wished there were a simulated combat system. Sometimes he got tired of puzzles and wanted to beat the crap out of something.