When I awoke, Intra was not there, but I figured she was off doing something else. She couldn’t…oh what’s the human phrase… Babysit me all the time. Still, I did find a note explaining that she had left to attend to some business, something about being ‘suddenly and massively rich and in need of an accountant.’ I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I didn’t bother trying to contact her and ask about it either.

Instead I stood and noted that my clothes were gone, another note stating that they were being cleaned and repaired, as they were actually starting to fall apart, but that there were other clothes available for now that would mimic my old ones. I went searching for these clothes, and found them in the closet, putting them on carefully. They were at first, vaguely formless, but quickly tightened around me and took on a shape and design that I found more familiar. In fact, I looked to be wearing a much nicer version of my old outfit, and it was somehow far more comfortable as well. No doubt Intra or Alice had something to do with this.

I didn’t know it, but these new clothes were more than just fashionable, they were energy, kinetic and blade proof, up to a point of course, and any exposed flesh was covered by a skin layer, flexible energy shield that had all the same properties as the defenses woven into the fabric.

In essence, I was a walking tank… for about five seconds before said defenses started to fail. But till then, the only things able to touch me were air and water.

I went in search of food, finding a machine standing in the kitchen and I paused when it turned to face me. It looked human, but was clearly a machine, and it… it bowed to me.

“Good morning, Ambassador. I am H.I. Aurora, at your service. Would you care for breakfast? Intra has briefed me on your dietary needs and some of your cultural dishes.” She said, and I paused. H.I., like Intra, yet… smaller.

“Uhhmm… Good morning to you too, Aurora. I would like breakfast, yes… But um, surprise me?” I say, and she smiles, turning away and thinking for a second before she started to make something for me to eat. “If you’re an H.I., like Intra, then why aren’t you in a ship?”

“Simple really, I used to be. I was integrated into the Terran Alliance Bio-mechanical Warship Sire of Damnation, a battleship if you want to be simple, over nine hundred and fifty years ago, but after the H.I. Independence Trials, and the subsequent dissolution of all Valkyr assets, profits and the company itself, I was given a choice to either remain in naval service, or go my own way. I chose the latter, but I still like to be of service, and so I took a job here, as an ambassadorial aide of sorts. I’m really just a caretaker at this point, but that suits me just fine.” She paused, looking over her shoulder at me. “I am not actually here, well, not housed here that is. My actual intelligence is based in Old Germany, and I remotely connect to this body to be of service. I’m actually in sixteen different houses at this time, serving both you and fifteen other ambassadors either breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

I was left speechless, trying to wrap my head around it. I knew Intra had the ability to split her focus to a considerable degree, but this felt different. It felt larger, more complex than just a single starship.

“Are you alright? You seem a bit distressed?”

“Whuh… Oh, uh, no I’m fine. Just trying to comprehend is all.”

“Ahh, a common issue. You’ll get the hang of it eventually.” She said, and placed before me a plate of something, and a jug of something beside it. Something called Maplee Sup? No… No, that wasn’t right.

“Maple syrup.” Intra’s voice whispered in my head.

“Oh, thanks.”

“Behold, a simple yet culturally significant human breakfast. Waffles, bacon, eggs and maple syrup. I altered the recipe slightly to be more nutrient rich for you, but the taste, texture and general satisfaction should be perfectly the same.” Aurora said all of this with a proud smile on her face, and then remembered to actually give me utensils to eat with.

“This… Maple syrup stuff, do I drink it?” I ask, and she giggled, before shaking her head.

“Oh no… Well I mean you could, but I wouldn’t recommend it. No, instead what you should do is put some on the waffles. Maybe just a little at first, see what you think. I know some people that drown their waffles and pancakes in it, but to each their own.”

I did as she suggested and that first bite was… It was magnificent! I promptly became one of those people that drowned their waffles in the stuff, much to her amusement. The eggs were good too, and the bacon… My gods, I could have died a satisfied woman right then.

Everything tasted so good, and humans ate this well all the time? It was hard to believe, yet the proof was there for me to see. And more importantly, taste.

A chime sounded from somewhere in the house and Aurora stiffened, her-huh, they were gold-eyes unfocused, before she looked at me and smiled. “Ms. Otoe is here, shall I let her in?”

Otoe… Otoe… Oh right, Alice!

I nod, my mouth a bit full with waffle, and Aurora smiles, before her head twitches slightly to the right, and I hear the front door open, the clicking of heels on the floor preceding Alice’s arrival in the kitchen/dining area.

“Oh good, you’re already eating.” She said, flashing a smile as she settled down nearby. “Now, I know you’ve only had a day to really relax, but there are a few things I need to discuss with you that can’t wait.” I nod, and she continues.

“Firstly, there’s an appointment with an augmenticist to take a look at all the implants Intra shoved in you when you first met. They’re not going to take them out or anything, they just want to make sure they’re working properly and that they won’t have harmful side effects on you. In and out, no time at all.”

Again, I nod and continue to eat, doing my best to split my attention in her favor.

“Secondly, and perhaps the more… annoying thing is that the Terran Alliance government will want to talk to you about the circumstances of your exodus and relocation. They’re bound to try and come at you sideways, twist things in an unfavorable light. They’re politicians, so just be truthful and don’t let them change your story. Stick to it and everything should be fine. Mostly they’ll want your own recounting of events, and that’s it. However, we already have an amazing lawyer lined up for you, one of the best, if not the best actually. You just listen to him and you’ll be fine.”

I was quite concerned about this other task of mine, but if she said I’d be alright, then I probably would be. I just had to remember to stick to the truth, and nothing else. If they didn’t like it, then too bad. I wasn’t going to let them try to twist Intra’s good and valiant deeds into something horrible.

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“Once that’s over, we’ll be holo-conferencing with your leaders and several others to see about finding your people a new home, a proper one that isn’t temporary. That should be relatively painless, and we shouldn’t have to do any rapid terraforming or anything, but you never know. The alliance has plenty of uncolonized systems to hand over, so we’re bound to find something that suits you perfectly.”

She paused, watching my face as I thought about it. When I swallowed, I finally spoke.

“What's terraforming?” I asked, and she cleared her throat and shifted on her chair.

“It’s… An overly complicated process. To simplify it, we take a planet that might not be habitable for humans, or any other species that we know, and we change it. The end result being a planet that’s more suited for human life, or any number of species that we are allied to. Considering your close preferences to humanity, we’ll most likely find a planet similar to Earth, and if not, then we’ll just make a barren rock of a planet into the perfect world for you. It’ll take a few weeks, possibly a month depending on unknown variables, but in the end, you’ll have a new homeworld.”

She paused, her lips pressing tightly together for a moment.

“What comes after that might be more… debatable.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, and please know that I mean no offense, but your species is, at the moment, culturally and technologically primitive compared to just about everyone else out there. Now, since you’re under our care, and know about us more than you probably should, we can offer you two things. The first is to leave you as you are, let you develop naturally and jump through all the same hoops as everyone else has, or we can uplift you. That means make you like us, at least technology wise. But that comes with risks, suddenly introducing advanced technology to a species that might not be ready for it could lead to accelerated extinction events out of our control, or worse really. Now, we’d not just uplift your technology, but also you and your minds, make both more able to understand advanced concepts and whatnot. It’s a very… delicate process, but it has been done before to great success. But it does rob you of the chance to develop all the same technology on your own, and your own culture may suffer as a result. Why, you may very well end up with our culture instead of your own, and that would… Well, we wouldn’t exactly be happy with that result. Not angry, just sad. We put great stock in unique cultures after all.”

I was left wondering, once she was done speaking. On the one hand, I don’t think my people would be comfortable remaining as they are, at the bottom of the pecking order so to speak. Inferior in every way to every other species out there. But to simply skip things in favor of equal footing sounded… wrong. Beneficial certainly, but wrong all the same.

It was not a decision I could make alone, and so I sighed, nodding.

“I understand, and I’m sure we’ll think long and hard about this. It doesn’t have to be decided instantly right?”

“Oh most certainly not, why you could take a few thousand years to make up your mind if you’d like, we’d just be there, waiting for whatever decision you make, keeping an eye on you making sure nothing or nobody messes with you in the meantime.”

Well that was a relief, at least we wouldn’t be pressured into it.

“If we were uplifted, would we be under your control?”

“In what way?”

“Like, would you be able to tell us what to do and we would have to obey no matter what?”

“Ah, mm… Well that would be something else we’d have to discuss. You see, this is an alliance, not an empire. Every species that calls itself part of our alliance has an equal voice in things, think of us like your species. Right now you all have your own tribes, each with a chieftain. Our alliance works the same way, each species has a chieftain, and they work together with all the others to ensure the Alliance remains stable and whole. There’s only been a few times where one species stood over the others and that was during a time of great crisis, but typically when said crisis is over, they relinquish the power they held. The few times they didn’t, resulted in some serious repercussions.”

I was about to say something, but she held up a hand to stop me.

“That said, once you were uplifted, you could also decide to not have any part in the Alliance, and be independent. So long as we all remained on friendly terms, you’d have full access to our space, trade could flow freely and we’d even come to your defense if you asked politely. But you would have no say in our politics, and we’d have no say in yours. Just friendly neighbors really.”

That was also a relief to hear, and I nodded, thinking it all over. My head was starting to hurt from all this information, but I could at least still think clearly.

“Thank you, Alice, you’ve been most informative.” I say, and she smiles broadly, happy to have been of service.

“You’re welcome, Ambassador. Now, Aurora, I’m starving, would you be so kind as to whip me up something to eat?”

“Certainly, your usual?”

“Yes please!” She turned back to me as Aurora went to work again. “Now there are more matters to attend to, but I’ll try to keep it brief.”

For the next thirty minutes, it was one thing after another, and I suddenly wished I could just go back to sleep.

Even though all this information was a bit much for me to handle, I absorbed it all and before too long I found myself back on that shuttle, as Alice handed me something. It was small, rectangular and had my picture on the front. I wasn’t sure how they had managed to capture my likeness, but it also had my name and species on it, plus some sort of symbol in a corner. Intra didn’t chime in on what that symbol meant.

Before too long, in no time at all actually I was being gently ushered into a tall building that had a red cross on it, there were many humans here, plenty of them looking like normal civilians, but they didn’t notice me and I realized that there was a thin sheet of glass that hid me from view. To those on the other side, all they saw was a reflective tinted glass panel, covered in ads and notices.

I was led into a comfortable feeling room, and Alice settled herself in a corner, while I sat in the center on a raised table thing. It wasn’t long before another human arrived, looking down at a tablet for a moment, before he focused his steel gray eyes on me.

“Good morning, Ula is it?” He said, his tone and voice jovial and kind. I nod, and he sets the tablet aside, rolls his shoulders and asks me several simple questions. I answer as I can, but quickly he starts straying into things I don’t know, but after the third question that I’m unable to answer he stops.

“Well, based on your responses alone I’d say you’re in perfect health. But I still have to run some scans on your implants, so if you don’t mind laying back and getting comfortable, it won’t take but a few minutes.”

Again I nod, and lay back, folding my hands over my stomach as a strange contraption rises from the floor and swings into position over me.

“Now, this won’t hurt at all, you might feel a little tingle but that’s it. I do ask that you not move around too much though, it’ll mess up the scans. Ready?”

“R-ready.” I’m really not, but I also want this over with as quickly as possible so I swallow my fear.

He pushes a button, and the contraption slides towards my feet, before a blue, flat beam of light is emitted, passing over my feet, my legs, and then further up slowly. All with a strange hum about it. It certainly doesn’t hurt, just like he said, but he was also right about the tingle, wherever the light touches feels a bit ‘fuzzy’ as one might say.

“You should close your eyes.” He says softly, as the beam nears my head, and I do. The contraption seems to linger on my head and neck for longer than it did elsewhere, but soon the hum stops and it folds back up into the floor.

“Well, I have to say but your friend Intra knew what she was doing when she put those implants in there, they’re perfectly adapted for your physiology, not even a hint of organic rejection. Masterful work if I’m being honest.”

“Such a flatterer.” Intra giggled in my head, and I chuckle as well.

“She says thanks.” I say, and the doctor laughs softly, before helping me sit up.

“She’s earned the praise. Now, everything checks out, you’re in perfect health and we don’t have to worry about your implants going all funky any time soon. So you’re free to go. Stay safe out there, miss Ula.”

I smile, and say my goodbyes, and before too long we’re back in the shuttle.

“We have some time to kill, so to speak, anything you’d like to see perhaps?” Alice asks, and I shrug.

“I don’t… I don’t know. What can I even do here?”

“Oh plenty… But let’s start small.” Her eyes lit up and a devious grin spreads across her face. “Let’s go shopping.”

I soon learned just how much fun shopping could be.