Physics be damned. Or at least abused to hell and back.
Yes, I may be getting looser with the curses in my brain, but they are back to staying off of my lips, for now. I'm just *conflicted*. I won't get my engagement cool-off period, but jump straight into the heap of things just like all the rest of it that has been happening.
Warp drives and subspace and all that science fiction is supposed to still take appreciable time to go incredibly massive distances! My brain certainly needs more time!
Only a *day* to go 16.4 megaparsecs. I do wish I were more of a science nerd to actually understand what that means without further, bigger, scarier numbers. Fifty-three and a half million light years.
That's… 53.5 million by three-hundred and sixty five times the speed of gosh darn light! Give or take. Though I don't think we're actually *going* that speed, it's just some other science shenanigans happening.
"At least it's good to know if I ever get homesick it will be this fast to fix it."
I spoke to him over a comm system in… guess what? The cockpit of my robot!
"Not without cost, but you are effectively correct. We can even 'honeymoon' there if it is to your liking, but I'd advise against going public with it when we do. Already your planet may be changed forever in the near future by our past tryst."
Or should this area I'm in be called a bridge? It doesn't have a seat, per say. It's more like a fluid filled cylindrical room… standing inside a Jaeger filled up with LCL.
Okay, maybe I secretly watched movies that were related to this stuff after I grew up. Maybe I made him watch a few with me too, during our stay-at-home and cuddle with a movie date nights, so I also kinda 'get' many of the design choices he made in this to comfort and appeal to me.
Even though I trust him, my human physiology just rejected the idea of 'breathing underwater' until I force-tricked it into it. Which is a fancy way of saying it took me until I ran out of breath to actually… ingest? Breathe?
The fizzy burning sensation in my lungs has ached away by now, but it was definitely an… experience.
"That sounds cryptic. Do you mean the 'aliens are real' folk will finally be vindicated out in the light or…?"
"Yes. Mostly. No one would dare anything overtly harmful to a developing planet that has eyes on it. More scrutiny from our side of matters; more hidden interaction with governments; more 'slingshotting' your culture to a point of entry to intergalactic affairs. A generation or two and your people's first steps out of your solar system might come."
"You'll find some of the factions just will not have the home of a princess stay out of the loop for too long. No matter how primitive they'd say you were. Others will make it their calling to portray that information loop of ours instead as some kind of a ladder of hierarchy - with the new entry to it firmly at the bottom rung."
I can't help but chuckle at that.
"Sounds like highschool. The gossips are always the first to befriend the transfer even if they think they dress funny - and the seniors bullying the freshmen is pure living cliche."
I move a limb and it moves. No fancy suit, just an immodest amount of nudity. I don't think of myself as a prude, but naked in space is… it's weird, right? Space is all about bulky protective outfits!
Or if it wanted the nice visual fan service, then the skin tight, wet-suit looking ones. I guess a giant robot being 'around me' is… bulky?
Anyway.
Something about nanomachines in the thick, life-sustaining liquid here quantifying all I do into data at quantum speeds. Though I didn't get the logic as to why - Hey, a birthday suit!
I mean, my birthday is coming up… and I can request… a suit that works successfully in this nano-stuff. Because it *has* to be able to work fine converting movement data without directly touching my skin, right?
Maybe it can have its own combat and safety enhancing potential when I have to get out… or I'll start feeling agoraphobic outside Presio. Then for Christmas, an AI co-pilot!
I'm quickly running out of holidays that he knows I like to ask for things, I'll have to learn some of his for more gifts.
"Yes. One could say that many aspects of your human psychology are rather indicative of the way of nature across the universe. The strong take, the weak suffer the loss. Sometimes the weak outnumber the strong and the reverse becomes truth."
"In the case of sentients, it is a constant development of tools, both physical and mental that bridges that gap until we arrive at as much of a stalemate as possible. I would guess that is the best way to describe our intergalactic society. A collection of stalemates."
I smile weakly.
"Well then. I guess I'm glad I have both your brain and this brawn if I'm to be fitting in there. Though it all sounds very 'Cold War' to me so far."
"I assure you the majority of the 'power' is entirely in political posturing as opposed to destructive force waving. While I enjoy you learning to dance about in your gift, the chances of you ever needing it are low."
But not non-existent. One of the reasons I love you is your aloof kindness, but the aloof smarts is a near tie with it. You won't tell me it won't happen, because other than the 'alien omission' you don't directly lie to me.
We even stopped over before we made it near the Virgo Cluster so you could teach me how it all works. Something I definitely wanted but wasn't bugging you about. That's plenty of reason enough for me to worry.
To be ready.
Then again maybe he just knows how insecure I am going into this new place and wanted to give me something else to think about. Either way, I'll have to find a way to get back at him for locking me out of all the weapon systems.
Surely there was *something* I could have fired off that wouldn't kill us both if I…
"Is that why you were on Earth? To experience somewhere that had not reached that same point of cold, safe staleness?"
"One of the reasons. But not the reason I stayed so long."
"Haha, I suppose I was that reason?"
"There is no better in all the galaxies."