Daniel came out of the puddle, that then closed behind him, as it closed, the new drop started to spin slowly in the opposite sense, it looked like it was recharging
Daniel looked around him, he was on a beach somewhere, on one side there was a rolling sea with an unhealthy color, and on the other sand and further strange pine trees
Daniel asked Tickles to check online where they were, but he couldn't find any access to the Sun Federation network, he did, however, find a different network, but it was outdated, even prehistorical compared to what he was used to
since Daniel and Tickles shared their experiences, their minds were in all sense of the word fused together, while communicating they didn't need to talk, and as tickles entered the network and started poking around it was like Daniel was doing it himself, but alas Daniel was starting to dislike this unfiltered connection
Daniel started to think "so we are on another planet that hasn't even reached the space era yet, they barely made more than a computer, so there's nothing useful for us here, but we can fish without worrying about spiritual animals, since there is barely any spiritual energy, let's go"
Daniel started walking to the beach fixed his fishing rod and put the backpack in deckchair mode, then he realized he had no bait, his usual supplier Vincent wasn't present, and he had to find bait himself somehow
after a quick internet research, Daniel found out to be in a country called Treklam, famous for his textile exports, and that a tackle shop, named ratel's baits and tackles, was 24 kilometers from him, in the nearest town of Grytu
luckily the locals were also a type of human race, he just had to hide his unusual eye color, and make his ears slightly longer, the black hair and body were still similar to those of the natives, no extra limbs
so 5 minutes later with a bit of Tickles magic, a local popular pair of sunglasses found on the internet, and a pair of prosthetic ears appeared, made out of trash found on the beach, sadly he had to do something about clothing too, especially the strange backpack
after another couple of minutes, Daniel looked like a local child with a heavy fabric backpack on his back, that was more, local styled, he just covered the metal with thick fabric, then put on the cloaking badge and flew to the tackle shop, while observing the locals
they used a currency called ert, and with 5 ert he could buy a local kind of centipede the locals used for fishing porpuses, with them Daniel would finally be able to go fishing, so he used tickles to access their banking system, and basically liberated a bunch of money and set up an account for himself
he then made sure to have learned to speak the local language well and proceeded to walk inside the shop
the rough-looking owner had, a sad aura around him and asked "good afternoon kid, what can I get you?"
Daniel said "5 ert of centipede please"
the owner said "coming right up"
Daniel started looking around, and found the various fishing gear really interesting, as he was here he bought a few things he already knew he would need, lines, hooks, and weights, but he also got interested in the stuff he had never seen before and ended up going on a shopping spree and exiting the shop with two heavy bags full of tackles
Daniel said "well, that didn't go as planned, let's go back to the beach"
When he arrived, he felt like he had too many things, he needed something to store them in, so he run a sensor sweep hoping to find something abandoned to recycle, while Tickles was looking on the internet for more info, and he found out many things
sadly this world was on the verge of self-destruction because of pollution, and the sensors confirmed it, revealing that the air was toxic, the water was toxic, and there were even 2 wreckages a kilometer from the coast in the water leaking fuel
the first thing Daniel did was of course scan himself, but apparently, this kind of toxicity couldn't do anything to his strange body, he just expelled it, like the rest of the impurities
but Daniel wasn't in the mood for fishing anymore, he put the fishing rod away, and started looking online, this world was called retak, its name meaning was dirt, like many other primitive planets, a classic
the people of retak had polluted the water and earth so much, that they were surviving by eating mushrooms, they grew in sterilized environments, and the animals and fishes that didn't die from the pollution mutated to resist it and were now so toxic that they couldn't be eaten
somehow fishing and hunting became popular hobbies of the locals anyway, as a way to keep the wildlife in control, no farming and hunting coupled with a lack of predators caused by the extinction of many different animals left the surviving animals free to multiplicate, and become too numerous, invading the cities like pests
Daniel wanted to go away from this stinky planet as soon as possible, but the drop had to charge before it could be used again, and he still didn't know if he could use it to go back home, as he certainly didn't want to go on a planet like this, but at this point, another planet was better than this anyway
as he was worrying about that, he remembered Tickles, he seemed to have a special ability too and Daniel wanted to know what kind of ability his soul who still had a gray nanite made of energy in the middle had
Daniel could feel through tickles, that his ability needed to be used on technology, but Daniel didn't have anything they could risk, every piece of gear he had on him was useful and was better kept working in case it was needed, so he searched the internet again, and found, that the most advanced technology on retak, was something called Artium satellite, in a military facility, but since he had no intention of fighting the locals, it wasn't on the menu
in the end, tickles settled for a big abandoned industrial machine, that was once used to power most of Treklam's cities, even if it was abandoned the locals had reacted too late, it would take more than stopping the pollution to save themselves as it was already accumulated beyond the planet capabilities to fight it
anyway since it was abandoned, as Daniel arrived he just had to cheat the security, after taking control of that archaic security system, and tricking it, making everything appear normal, he entered the power plant, apparently, this machine used any kind of waste to generate power, except metals and glass, so it burned plastic, paper and the organic, the problem was, that those fumes were toxic, but no one cared about it, because they had cheap electricity in their houses
even being a weapon of ecological destruction, this power plant was one of the most advanced technologies on retak, one of the last ones built before the total shutdown, in an attempt to save the planet
so Daniel let himself in and said to tickles that he could use his ability on it
tickles activated it, instantly gray light shined from tickles to the machine, and in the meantime, the glowy nanite disappeared and a transparent one took its place
a minute later, the giant machine disappeared, and Tickles looked a little bigger, but Daniel didn't notice that, because he was busy with the storm of informations now entering his brains
the moment tickles consumed it, the numbers of nanites it was made of grew, he was 1kg before and now he was 1.0005 kg even if it seemed a small number it was huge on a microscopic scale
he also learned everything about that machine, he knew how it worked in and out, and it held absolutely no mysteries to them, with Daniel knowledge he could also easily make it better, so it wouldn't poison the environment anymore, but why would he, solar power was still much better for him for now, and has said before the planet was beyond saving
Tickles small groups of nanites, inside the maru's on verulus, were somehow still connected to the main "body" of tickles that was with him, they received this update, and Daniel realized that he could follow the signal back to verulus like a beacon, even if he didn't know where he was
this gave Daniel a new idea for his next project one that will someday grow to a terrifying extent, but since he had to wait, and this industrial area so conveniently close to the sea was abandoned, why not use it, he put tickles to work and started recycling every technology he found, since they were too low level to catch his interest or Tickles appetite anyway and now he needed a temporary lab and materials
luckily an industrial zone really has a little bit of everything, he even found a source of food, one of the industrial buildings around him, used to manufacture the mushroom boxes, the local's source of food, and he brought two of them back to his improvised lab and got them to produce again, it was absurd, how fast this mushrooms variety native of this planet grew, a single box produced enough for two people to eat every week
Daniel for the first time was curious not about technology but about the people of retak, he couldn't understand how they reached this point of no return and still went ahead till it was impossible to reverse with their current level of technology, after all, they did this to their own planet
this pollution was chemical, the toxic fumes, turned into toxic clouds, which turned into toxic rains, even not counting the sunken ships, as those were apparently recent, as some people turned into pirates, refusing to believe what the government said
this started causing the civil unrest that was plaguing some parts of retak, luckily it was mostly under control on land, most of those retakians just took various old fishing boats, which were long abandoned, and run away, the ones behaving like terrorists were a minority
Daniel wasn't completely selfish but he wasn't a busybody either, if the threat was external he might have tried to help, but the retakians brought this on themselves, it was part of the natural cycle of their civilization
Daniel didn't feel any need to help them, just like he didn't help the naricu, the difference was that with the naricu he was still thinking of a different solution to help them in the future, while for the retakians he didn't have any intention to help them
right now he only wanted to pass the time while working on the new project, maybe take some souvenirs back for the family while the cyan drop charged up
the first thing he did was build some v2 maru's, because he didn't have any anchor sand and racing bronze he couldn't build the advanced v3, Daniel had them built mostly for protection and labor, as he was alone on an alien planet after all
tickles was a little faster than usual and in 10 hours 2 maru v2 were ready, the problem was that he didn't have the roof full of high-tech solar panels, so he put the batteries in his spacesuit in the maru's and put empty ones in, to charge with the little solar panels, it will take a while but was worth it
and with the maru's ready, he could finally start working on the new project, but he still couldn't shake the sensation that someone was watching him even if he was now far away from Verulus