UPON VESTIA: CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

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Asher considered his words for a few seconds, glancing around the room as he thought, then looked to Kay again. "I've been thinking over everything that's happened today, and I feel like it would be wrong for me to leave Terra before the androids have been granted their freedom," he said. "I think it might be in the best interests of the children and the androids if I stay on Terra while Vestia goes on to the Imperium." He wished he could have phrased it better, but he just didn't know how. Ugh.

"That makes sense," Tala said. "You are fortunate to be of a more efficient lineage, Kay's transformations look most unsatisfactory." She huffed air through her nostrils and took another drink of water. "I suppose Ivor must also have difficulty."

~~
Asher warily clicked the site and looked at the videos, looking relieved as he saw that the page was full of the video and audio evidence against MegaBrainTech, rather than something more violent. He was probably going to be bracing himself for videos of anti-robot gang violence for a long time to come though, ugh.
"Looks like Celia or Mourn managed to decrypt the evidence, then," he told Kay, smiling weakly. "Well this could be good news."

"I will hope to see you again, in a better time then." Starr said gently, smiling at Celia again.
~
~~
Dawn did enjoy the quiet movie nights, trading off who picked the show depending on the moods and what they wanted to watch. It was good to have down time like this.
~~~
Shane grinned and nodded, seeing a minotaur planet could be fun.

"In a better time," Celia agreed with a sad smile. "Good luck with your people." She'd head out, probably getting help from Vestia to navigate toward the airlock.

~~
James requested Haakon from the computer's options, and the world shifted. They were in another city, this one with much wider streets and taller buildings. There were flower planters hanging colorfully from the lamp posts, and the air was warm, although a cooler breeze was coming in as the sun started to set. There were cars and buses on the street, albeit somewhat larger than the ones normally seen on Terra, and minotaurs of a variety of sizes and colors were going about their business.

Above the roads, a huge system of pipes connected the buildings. Some of the pipes were some sort of glasslike material, and through them, the group would see creatures that resembled manatees swimming, either moving rapidly, or lazily treading water and wiggling the strange arrays of tentacles on their snouts at each other.

Silence nodded. "Brother can change, but not good." She chugged water thirstily. "Scared change, always have arm wrong. Very awkward."

----

Kay's frown deepened. Good news? hmm. [Do you think it'll be enough?] It was, in his mind, horrible news. It showed that many terrans weren't just ignorant but willfully cruel and evil. Mourn had been so insistent that Terrans were just really stupid and naive and honest, Kay had rather wanted to believe that. It was easier to forgive and understand. He was too scared to investigate further though, unsure he could quite stand to see in depth precisely how awful this whole thing was and how corrupt megabrain really was.

---

Matt looked around, delighted. They had cars! For some reason he'd assumed Minotaurs wouldn't have cars. It was the hooves.
"What are those?" He asked, pointed at the things in the water tubes.

---

Esk was fairly quiet for the first half of the movie, but inevitably as he relaxed he resumed his usual snide response to media with occasional comments or protests of how unrealistic or how ridiculous something was.

Shane looked around the world curiously with a smile. Now this was an interesting place. He went over to the glass and looked in at the manatee like creatures too.

~~~
Dawn smiled when he started making his comments, knowing he was relaxed when he did. This was more like it. She would laugh at some of his comments and try to explain the motives for others for him.

"Unfortunate," Tala said. "Ah well! At least we have one shifter skilled in changing shape on this ship, as well as the star dragons. If there is a fight, claws are only good."

~~
"I don't know if it'll be enough, but I think it's another push in the right direction," Asher said. "Evidence that MegaBrainTech believes we're sentient is certain to lend credibility to the idea. If the manufacturer thinks there's something to hide, then there probably is, and the Terran Empire would be stupid not to realize that."
He didn't really see this news the way Kay did. Maybe it was foolish, but Asher still wanted to believe the best of the species that had created him, even if some of them had been corrupted by money and power.

~~
"I think they're capricons," James said. "They and the minotaurs worked together to achieve FTL flight. Cause minotaurs have hands and stuff, but capricorns developed a written language first. I... don't know much more than that though." He smiled sheepishly.

Ellie followed Shane, going to stare at the creature.

One of the manatee creatures swam down from one of the higher pipes over the road to Shane's level. It was a medium gray color, and had big, curling horns on its head and a number of slender tentacles on its chin that moved independently of each other. There was a sort of computer terminal inside the pipe with a display facing out toward the land dwellers, and the creature used those prehensile tentacles on its face to type out a greeting. [Hello, welcome to Haakon]

Shane grinned and waved at the creature. "This is so cool, even as a holodeck thing." He said happily.

[Real or not, it's always fascinating to discover new species and worlds,] the capricorn's writing scrolled across the screen. [If you have any questions, we are here to help. Also, I can switch to text-to-speech for your convenience]

Shane nodded and glanced to the others, happy to have this one able to be talked to unlike the snail-people before. "Sure, does anyone have a question?"

Matt rolled over to get a closer look at the Capricorn. "Okay that's cool." He looked at the pipe network interestedly. He'd never encountered any sentient totally aquatic species before.
"So they both like.. live together in a sort of.. symbiotic relationship?"

---

Kay nodded grimly. He hoped Asher was right. [Be careful out there. ]

---

Esk ate and argued with Dawn's explanations, stating matter of factly that most of them didn't make any sense. They probably didn't, movies were dumb like that.

----

Dawn laughed, glad to have this easy relationship back with him. Despite anything else, she did enjoy watching movies with him.

~~~
Shane grinned and looked to Ellie then back to the Capricorn that had come to talk with them. He was a little surprised to see a couple of minotaurs until he realized they were dragons, shifted to that form.

[Yes, it's a symbiotic relationship. The capricorns were unable to develop much technology underwater, but had a written language, but the minotaurs had developed many technologies without written language, even basic combustion engines. When they combined their strengths, they were able to create new things neither species could have imagined alone,] the capricorn wrote. Its face wasn't really well suited to facial expressions, but it seemed proud.

"That's so crazy," Ellie said. "Like, duuude, it's the power of friendship in species form!"

James looked over at the minotaur-dragons, "Oh hey, nice minotaur shapes, guys!"

~~
Asher smiled softly. "I'll be careful," he said. He looked to the news article again, "I'm glad this evidence is available, it won't fix everything instantly, but I'm sure it's getting attention from the Terran empire."

Matt blinked and looked over at the dragons. "hey, you guys are blending in"
He looked back to the capricorn. "that's really cool." A thought occured to him. "So.. does that mean you guys are at war with the imperium too?" He'd never heard of capricorns so.. hmm.

---

[Desperate people do awful things. I hope the authorities intervene quickly.] He frowned. He could only hope this would make anyone else think twice about the voluntary recall.

Asher nodded. "The Terran Empire is basically good, I think they'll eventually do what's right." He frowned, "If Mourn got access to the information, I guess that means Celia made it here safely. I wonder if I should try to talk to her." He didn't really want to, he wasn't very fond of her at all, ugh.

Kay looked tense, he didn't want Asher running off, not tonight.
[Do you want to?] He asked. He wasn't totally sure how Asher felt about Celia, it seemed complicated.

Asher thought about that for a few seconds, still frowning. "No, I don't really want to. She's... not someone I've ever been terribly fond of, although I don't think she's a bad person." Yeah, it was complicated. "I'm not sure if I should though, I mean, she did help us a lot this week."

Kay shook his head. [There's always tomorrow, I doubt anyone's in much of a hurry to go out there tonight.] He looked skeptical, he wasn't totally sure he trusted this computer or her motivation for helping the androids now and not sooner. Hmm.

Asher looked hesitant, but nodded. Yeah, no need to hurry, right? He could talk to her later... or never... she'd probably not care anyway, most of the androids were probably interchangeable as far as she was concerned.
Besides, right now he was supposed to be here with Kay, because he kept abandoning Kay and it was just mean, and he felt pretty terrible about it. That was totally more important than Celia.
"You're right, she can wait. It's hard to be sure what I'm supposed to be doing at any given moment though," he said, trying for a humorous tone, "Helping to lead a revolution is a little bit outside of my default programming."

Kay rested his head on Asher's shoulder [No, it's not something any of us have much experience with. I suppose you could argue it's outside all of our programming.] He smiled softly, glad for the lighter tone and Asher dropping the idea of going to talk to someone else.

Asher let his head rest against Kay's, smiling softly. "It would have been nice to have some sort of nice, simple programming to tell us how to free people and make the universe better. Then again, I suppose it wouldn't be a proper fight for freedom if we were just following some hard-coded directive to free people, would it?"

[Free will is a wonderful thing, but it also means not knowing what you're doing most of the time. ] Kay agreed.

Those dragons gave cow-smiles and wiggled their ears, finding this funny a little, though they too were interested in the information given by the capricorn.

"It's almost reassuring to know we're all muddling through this together," Asher said. He might have screwed up worse than most when he'd been captured by the Family, but it was still comforting to think that he wasn't the only person to ever do something horribly wrong for a terrible reason.

~~
Ellie grinned at the minotaur-dragons. "Wow, you guys are even cute as giant cow people, that's amazing."

James smiled softly. He found it weird but endearing to see other minotaurs, normally he only got to see Tala, after all.

[Yes, the capricorns and the minotaurs are allied in the war. The minotaurs are more visible as there are many more of them, but capricorns often act as pilots or commanding officers,] the capricorn wrote. [The fate of both species is closely connected.]

"So, you just have pools around the controls of the ship?" Shane asked curiously, thinking of how that could work.

[The controls are built into the capricorn's water tank so that they can operate them easily. All except the smallest craft a secondary cockpit designed for minotaurs, in case something were to happen to the capricorn,] the capricorn explained. [Needless to say, Haakon fighter craft tend to be rather large.]

"That's so awesome." Shane said with a grin. He liked learning about other species like this.

[We like to think so, too,] the capricorn said, its mouth opening in a goofy, doglike imitation of a smile. [If you guys are interested in seeing the spacecraft, or our political building, or nearly anything else, I can teleport you there. Haakon has been extensively recorded for the education of all.]