The search for more cities was mostly being handled by the shuttle's AI, and it made Angela feel like she was in a star trek episode, in an advanced spaceship investigating an alien civilization.

The whole continent was big it came from near the north pole to halfway between the equator and the south pole. The continent had a really big divide in the middle a little above their equator that divided it in two.  The divide looked like to be 1 km wide, but there was a connection like a natural bridge that is maybe 3 km wide. They decided to call the two parts the northern and southern continents.

The search was going to take very long, mostly because the AI is using the camera and checking for anomalies before zooming in. And it has to focus on one section of the continent at a time.

They decided to start from the south most location of the southern continent, just because it was the closest location to where they were currently.

And after half an hour they needed a  distraction from staring continuously at the screen for every section of the continent the shuttle currently scanning.

"What do you think we'll find?" Angela asked the whole group "I hope to find friendly aliens who are inviting and teach us the meaning of life. Just saying"

Paul and Alicia laughed and Alex looked like he didn't get the joke.

"Well, I just hope they have good food" Alex said

"What?" The three of them asked incredulous at the same time, is he really only concerned with food? "Why are you only concerned with food?" Alicia asked

"I am not just concerned with food. It's just that I can't speculate on what we'll find, but the thing I hope to find is security and food, everything else is secondary, unless they have a way for us to go back home then that would come first" he explained

"Ok, I understand the security and the way back, but why the focus on food?" Alicia asked, Angela's was a little surprised how they are interacting so well with him. She knows that Alicia is asking him questions when she can't understand something about the physics but, and Paul is learning about the shuttle, but she didn't know they were this relaxed around each other, almost friendly. Is she really the only one who still had problems with him.

"Ok, All this time we've only been eating instant food on breakfast and the drinks. Most of the things we've eaten are what I had left of the real food I had brought with me, which is going to run out by the way"

"Ok, but the processed food as you call it is not bad" Alicia said, and Angela has to agree with her

"You haven't eaten it for a long time. I have and after a while the bland taste gets nauseating, especially if we have to eat it for more than a few months."

"I think there is a story there" Paul said.

"Yeah, but trust me it gets bad after a while" he said simply

"Come on, we agreed on being truthful with each other" Alicia said "What's the story"

"I didn't think the agreement included embarrassing stories from our past, it was supposed to be just about our current situation" he stated trying to weasel his way out. Now even Angela was curious about it

"Now we want to hear it" Paul said

Alex sighed and after a long pause said "Ok"

"It started after I got my ship, and got the first part of the money for my engine designs. Life was going great, I could roam the stars and explore all I wanted" he said looking at the sky, or roof of the shuttle.

"It got even better when I suddenly had a new girlfriend, I don't ever know how that happened"

"How can you not know how you got a girlfriend, didn't you ask her out?" Alicia asked

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"I did, but I still don't know why she said yes" he answered

"Why did you ask if you thought she would say no?" Paul asked

"Basically I couldn't find a satisfactory answer to the question of 'why not try' I was in another planet and I was in the middle of a very lucky streak, so, i just went for it. But that's not important" he said, it's weird to see that he actually had life and was not simply a deranged mad scientist

He continued "What's important was that she was very adventurous, I thought I was adventurous, but how do you say it?"  He asked trying to remember something, he then looked at the tablet in his hand "yes, she put me to shame" that was interesting, using the tablet in real time to translate, and with his mind reader device it happens fast.

"She proposed we go on a tour to explore planets by ourselves, and I immediately agreed"

"Weren't you afraid to go to remote planets with someone who was basically a stranger? For all you knew she could be trying to steal your ship" Paul asked

"Well about the stealing the ship part, it's ridiculous, all ships obey their owners, it would be suicide to threaten the owner while inside the ship. Thefts in my world are for minor things, like if you have something small, non-automated and hard to trace" he said  "As for going away in a long voyage with a stranger, well, she was hot, I was 21 and had broken up with my previous girlfriend 2 years prior, I didn't even consider not going." So, he was basically coming off of being a teenager and already had a ship that he could use to roam the stars, what sort of society is that? It's like giving a plane to a teenager, and she realized that some people on earth actually had private airplanes at that age.

"How does that lead into the food?" Paul asked

"We forgot to plan ahead, and figured that since we had all power cells charged and the ship had the food processor, it would be ok, well, it was not, at first it was great but after a while it's not, which is why my stock is always filled, I actually buy a lot of food and fill my ship with it to eat on the way. It's also why I bought my first android, a permanent cook on the ship" Angela gasped at that, is he saying that he has an android and he uses it as a cook? And from what she saw from his library their androids are really sophisticated, if you didn't know they are machines you would think they are normal people, and he uses it to simply cook food.

"That wasn't that embarrassing, how did then trip end?" Alicia asked

"Well, after we got nauseous of the food we decided that instead of cutting the trip short we would go to a forest world. It's a world my people terraformed but are not recommended for long term living of human civilizations. They have like slightly elevated levels of solar radiation on the surface and slightly higher gravity than recommended but are ok for short term stay especially if you stay under the cover of trees, which cover almost all of the world." he explained "The world had trees, insects and small animals especially engineered to live in that environment, so, we could use them for food" The idea of living from the land sounded romantic, but the idea of eating bugs and small animals didn't.

"Ok, then What?" Paul asked

"We decided to live without technology for a long time, I used the ship's 3D printer to print us a bathtub and a few other necessities, then moved away from it all" he continued "The problem was I had forgotten to talk to my mom after meeting the girl, and it was my first long trip solo, so she was worried.  When she was unable to talk to me directly she went to the security office and convinced them to mount a rescue operation"

Everyone could see where this was going, but stayed quiet to not miss the ending

"Even worse, since she had previous training she was allowed to accompany my rescue mission" This was getting even better "well, when they arrived at the planet I was with my new girlfriend who I hadn't introduced to my mom" he paused for effect, "And we were taking a bath together" Everyone laughed at that "It was embarrassing to have my parents meet my girlfriend for the first time in that situation" The idea of it was embarrassing on many levels. It's still strange to see him as a normal human being.

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A few hours later when the search finished the southern continent they all analyzed the results together.

The bottom half of the southern continent was completely covered with dense forest with some small patches of what they assumed were villages.

Since they had decided to park in a place where the shuttle could be concealed there were only two possibilities in the continent, the sea or the big empty patch of land on the east of the continent.

The empty section of land was out because there was nothing close enough to it to walk on foot in less than a few months, that only left the sea. They had asked about it and he said the shuttle can float on water, or if need be, forced to submerge

It looks out that above the dense part of the forest is mostly filled by cities. The cities were of different sizes but they all seemed to be surrounded by really think walls.

Analyzing the results they came out with five possibilities, these were because they were close enough to shore that they could walk there in a few hours at most. Alex proposed analyzing the northern continent but people said they preferred to check out these possibilities rather than wait more hours to analyze the northern continent.

The few facts they were able to find out was that this planet was a little bigger and gravity would be 20% bigger than earth. It had a 23 hours day and rotated in the same direction as earth.

They decided to start from the southernmost city and work their way up.

One thing they all agreed was to not reveal the shuttle to the natives as much as possible, mostly because they didn't know how they would receive it, and it was better to reveal when they knew and trusted the people here and were sure it wouldn't blow back on their faces