[See? She wasn’t dangerous. I told you they are very nice people if you get to know them.]

[Okay, I have to agree that she seemed nice but what if she was only nice because she had ulterior motives? Like egging into me...] I argued as I hopped on the hoverer in the bay.

[They are universally known to be good natured people even to those whom they don’t intend to… ‘egg into’ as you eloquently put it.]

[By the way, how did you know that she was a female even before she spoke?] I asked while zooming through between the ships.

[The Captain said so and she was blue. Due to sexual dimorphism, the females are blue, and the males are dark gray and have smaller bodies.]

[These type of explanations are a lot more interesting to me than the mumbo-jumbos about phasing out asteroids into the dream realm or whatnot...]

[Uuugh...] she groaned.

[Stay strong! You can keep yourself from correcting me! I believe you can hold back!]

…

[I hope her egg will hatch this time. Then she wouldn’t have a reason to bother me,] I continued.

[You hope for the best for all the bad reasons,] she commented like a wise turtle. [It’s commendable that she tries so hard to give birth completely natural. Natural births should be valued more in general.]

[Now that you mention it… She was talking about the First birth something-something. What was that? Do they reproduce that hard?] I asked further as I ditched my hoverer and continued on foot. I didn’t forget to check my six for any unwanted followers but I couldn’t see anybody suspicious snooping after me.

[The First-Born Assistance. The Empire provides free medical assistance to anybody who wishes to have an offspring. It only applies to the firstborn, though,] she explained. [The Severins enjoy one of the best natality rates among the sentient races of the Empire. And before you ask, the natality rate is calculated by the number of births taking into account various elements,] she added.

[Except Humans...]

[No. Humans have average natality rates among the races.]

[How the hell do you calculate it then? She said she has her 7th egg now and you are telling me that Humans have worse rates? One of my classmates from elementary popped out a child every second year after she hit 17.]

[What?!] she exclaimed.

[Yeah! She had like four or five kids when I last checked,] I nodded in confirmation.

[That’s impossible! Having two children is rare and it isn’t unheard of to have three but five?!]

[Are you fucking with me? The record amount of children by a single woman was above 60 if I remember correctly.]

[ABOVE 60????!!!!] she screamed.

[Woah! Calm down. It’s extreme, I know but you don’t have to freak out like that,] I told her with my arms up to my chest.

[I don’t have to freak out like that?! The average human female or for that matter any other race hardly can bear one offspring naturally during their lifetime. That’s why they have the First-Born Assistance. And you swagger in from the past to tell me that there were human females bearing more than 60 children?] she retaliated.

[Seriously? You guys fucked up something majorly along the road. We had to come up with a bunch of birth control stuff to stop women from getting pregnant all the time.]

[They say it’s due to genetical degradation but still, if what you say is true then the contrast is enormous.]

[It sounds fucked up if you ask me. How come every race has the same problem? And what’s with the firstborn help? Why can’t they help more?]

[The Empire provides it for free but it’s still a costly procedure. They can’t spend so much money on so many people and an unlimited amount of assistance would lead to unwanted population problems.]

[Holy shit, you really are sheep. They even tell it to your face...]

[What are you talking about?]

[Even in my time there were ways to artificially help people get children. It was expensive but definitely affordable. Don’t tell me that in this dream future you still haven’t figured out cheaper and easier methods...]

[I-I don’t know about that-]

[They are shamelessly population control the people like cattle. How can nobody realize this? It’s fucking obvious! At least in my time they regulated it openly in some countries.]

[I didn’t get any information about details like these and I can’t find anything relevant either on the Network.]

[Tell me it doesn’t make sense!] I dared her.

[It does make sense but...]

[Where are the conspiracy theorists? The Network should be full of them...]

[There’s nothing, I’m telling you.]

[Of course, there is nothing,] I smirked and mumbled on, [and they can get away with shit like this openly…]

…

[You know, I’m half expecting some kind of secret agent or a sweeper team to take us away anytime… We are having dangerous thoughts. We are being naughty sheeple,] I joked.

[Don’t jinx it!] she retorted.

[Hey, hey, hey! Are you stealing jinxing now? I thought you said it’s nonsense.]

[It is. That’s why it fits.]

[Fair enough,] I nodded after a little thinking.

I set my destination on this station to the first apparel shop near the docking bay. Before entering, I took another careful look behind me to see if I had anybody following me, but there was nobody suspicious.

This place had more variety than the last shop, so I chose my usual dark colored stuff I liked to wear. I also picked a new helmet with the same addons like my old one but with a different design. It was sleeker and shinier than the last one. Additionally, it had a neat function where I could remove the plate just in front of my mouth in case I wanted to drink or eat without taking off the whole helmet. For some additional royalty fees, I also managed to transfer the lovely grinning image that I was so fond of from my old helmet. Genna wasn't happy about it.

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I changed into my new set and put my old stuff into the small box with a handle that my new clothes popped up in. This time I wanted to take them with me. The less shit I left behind the fewer clues that would lead to me in the future.

I walked out from the shop looking like a completely different person. I didn’t want to linger any longer on this station because I was fairly certain that they would be on my heel in no time. Genna’s report about an interesting find from the Network proved me right on our way back to the docking bay.

[The description fits you perfectly. The notice went up on the Hatuu public boards during the night when you were trying to fit in the power core. They had the gall to lie that they want to return something valuable to you.]

[It’s an easy lie. Nice citizen A is looking for citizen B to be nice and do nice things. Please help A find B… So fucking basic I’m inclined to believe that they are being intentionally stupid about this to make me underestimate them or to lull me into false safety,] I grumbled.

[It’s still a good sign that they didn’t know where you were at the time.]

[I have a feeling that they’ll easily follow me here. From here on, we’ll have to make it harder to follow us. Changing clothes completely and hitching a new ride are the first steps.]

[I agree. As soon as they find out that the ship from the museum was stolen I’m sure they’ll guess that it was most likely you if they can’t find you anywhere,] she added. [What surprises me the most is the lack of news about the disappearance of the main sight from the museum. It’s been more than a day. Why aren’t there anything on the Network about this?]

[How would I know? Maybe they block the bad news to make the carebears less anxious?]

When I arrived back at the docking bay, I didn’t go to the dock supervisor this time. That was an easy pattern to follow, and I intended to break it. I took a hoverer and floated off to a peaceful corner of the bay where the supervisor couldn’t see me. This time, I wanted to find a ride on my own. I used the good old method of walking up to people who were heading back to their ships like a homeless person in a parking lot.

Fortunately, a Linbog only crew with a ship that looked like a dark green teardrop took me in happily after I told them I was willing to pay. On the other hand, I nearly broke my teeth in anger when they only asked for 10k. The fucking white-white ship captain went elbow deep into my pockets…

This trip was supposed to be shorter since our destination galaxy was the neighboring one. The emphasis was on ‘supposed to’.

I was quietly lying in my comfortable bed - yes, the Linbog ship had better rooms too, despite the lower price - practicing fake karate moves towards the ceiling with my newfound agility when the ship jolted back with a loud rumbling. My stomach flipped over at least three times, but its contents couldn’t escape, fortunately.

Shortly after a little fellow came to inform me that there was some unexpected Darkness movement in the area and our arrival had to be delayed.

[You mentioned it before but what the fuck is this Darkness? Is it some edgy space monster?] I asked Genna.

[Exactly! It comes at night to bite stupid people’s heads off. I would hide if I were you!] she paused for a moment. [Wait!] she exclaimed. [What was that? Do you hear it too? Oh, no! It’s too late for you, the Darkness is here, and it hungers!]

[Soooo, that’s a no?] I asked with an unamused face.

[Of course, you doofus. It’s not a living thing. It’s an enigma. Nobody can explain it or understand it. It’s every known rule’s exception. Physics stop working in it while it can be matter, antimatter, energy or nothing at all but still something. One moment you think you know what it’s made out of but the next it’s something completely different. Its movements are unpredictable. A small cloud can spend thousands of cycles stationary and for no reason start moving again. Some believe it’s sentient in its own way while others think our supercluster committed some crime and our punishment is isolation by the Darkness. Intergalactic travel is dangerous because there are patches of it between the empty spaces around galaxies. Outside the Peripheral Regions, it is so dense that travel or communication between superclusters is technically impossible. Everything that ventures into the Darkness meets its end in some horrible way.]

[There’s no way something like that exists...] I said with an ugly expression.

[You are right, it is the impossible manifested in reality, a paradox. It defies everything we know. Countless people spent their entire lives trying to understand just a sliver of it or find patterns in its behavior without any success. There are even wall-arts that collected the names of people who went insane trying to unlock its mysteries.]

[Am I imagining things or you sound like a huuuuge fangirl of this thing?] I teased with a half smile.

[Of course, I am! So many questions waiting for the first person to answer them. Truly fascinating!]

[You have the heart of a scholar!] I praised her with a thumbs up.

While the ship was floating idly in the middle of nowhere, we talked more about intergalactic travel in particular. In the past, it was supposed to be dangerous because the dark stuff can cheat scanners. To my question why it was called Darkness, Genna couldn’t give a straight answer. She said the name makes absolute sense, but there might be a problem with the translation. The language I knew most likely didn’t have the word they used for it, and the Translation Module went to the second best option instead. It wasn’t named Darkness because you couldn’t see through it…

Traveling between galaxies became safer when they started the 1st Space Travel Protection project. Since no scanner worked with an acceptable error margin, they decided on a brute force option. They had countless scout ships working under the STP, and their purpose was finding the current safest routes between galaxies. These routes frequently changed due to the unpredictable Darkness movements but when they established a safe route, they covered the surrounding areas with Death Drones. The little machines’ sole purpose was broadcasting that they are alive and well. In case one stopped broadcasting the STP immediately knew that something was up around the area and they could rearrange the nearby drones for confirmation. One of the most reliable trait of the Darkness was its destructive nature. If one cloud got too close to the safe route and Death Drones died, the traffic could be shut down. The STP would move out and find a new safe route. Their vessels were probably the only ones that freely traveled around in the void between galaxies, but the number of destroyed ships was monumental.

Once we were given a new safe route, it didn’t take long for us to arrive at the next station. It was the general setup where stations were the hubs of intergalactic travelers and traders in order to keep populated planets’ ship traffic to a minimum.

On the next station, I did the same things like on the last one. Quietly took off to a clothes shop, changed into something new, went back to the docking bay and found myself a ride to somewhere else. It felt like overkill at this point, but I wanted to be extra sure I went off the radar.

My last stop was in a system called Oopxyt AA in Mythoc controlled space. Mythoc was the name of a race apparently. All credit goes to Genna.

This was my last stop for a while. I would stay at this station for a few weeks and see how things turned out. If I was being followed even all the way to here, there would be no point in continuing. They would still find me eventually. I would have to see how the dice rolls.

Before anything else, I needed a place to stay, and for that, I had a nice idea for misdirection. With Genna’s help, I found an average quality place where I could stay. I had money now so I wasn’t going to live in a hole, especially if I might end up caught anyway. Sadly I couldn’t just waltz in and register up. For some illogical reason, they strictly required your personal information when you stayed at an accommodation provider. However, vastly more serious activities required no identification or verification. Like taking off with a stolen ship from Hatuu’s atmosphere… The contrast made no sense whatsoever.

Anyway, I had a problem of how to rent a place, and I had the most brilliant idea to solve it. I went through 3 people until finally one was curious enough to hear me out.

“You want me to buy rent for… you? But why?” Asked the guy… or girl… I couldn’t decide. It was confusing because he/she was hot. Was it okay to find her or him hot? Whatever…

“Yes! Exactly! I’ll give you the money to do it, and you know what? I’ll even add in an extra 1k just because you are so nice to help me out,” I explained with an encouraging thumbs up.

“But why?” s/he asked with a frown.

“It’s… complicated. My ex’s father has some connections and if I sign in under my real name she might be able to find me,” I explained with a few throat clears. “She’s… well, let’s just say she’s way too clingy. I need some space from her,” I leaned in and whispered to him/her.

The guy/girl’s face immediately brightened up, and s/he clapped on my shoulder with his/her soft hands. “I know exactly what you mean,” s/he said with an ‘I-feel-you-bro/girl’ smile and a little eyebrow wiggle.

It was fairly easy to find someone to get me an anonymous rent for a month. Even though s/he paid for the room and it was under his/her name I still got to use it since they didn’t regulate who could get into a customer’s room. I just hoped he didn’t decide to come see me unannounced… or hoped she would? Ugh...

Now for the last bit, I asked, [Genna, please be a sweetheart and get a rent under my name for a month at some cheap place far away from here. Preferably the opposite direction from the first station we hitched a ride to.]

[You want to send them on a phantom chase in case they can check accommodation information?]

[I’ll be more slippery than the floor after a boy-band concert,] I said with a cool smirk on my face.

[Was that a joke? I don’t get it…]

[Thank god! It was so bad...] I sighed through my facepalm. The cringe...