The Record of Unusual Creatures

To both Katreina and Lorenz, the meeting was a novel experience. The Queen of Sirens rarely left the oceans, and had never signed any form of contract with another civilization. Lorenz, on the other hand, had lived all his life on the ark, and had never seen aliens in the flesh — he was startled when he first saw Nangong Wuyue. Both of them were new to the role of representative of their people, but fortunately, they were mentally prepared to carry out the negotiations, even if it was their first time.

There was not much to say in the meeting. Everything went smoothly as planned. The Queen had already decided on most of the details with Hao Ren. Lorenz, on the other hand, was desperate to find a temporary place for his fleet to settle down and get started on reparation works. With the lives of his people at stake, he was willing to accept almost all the conditions.

The Queen wanted only an ark, a price that was far better than he had anticipated.

Negotiations happened in the anteroom beside the bridge on Petrachelys. As a meeting that decided the fate of an entire civilization, involved the lease of an entire society, and attended by the highest authorities from two civilizations, the setting was considerably lacking. Perhaps years later, sirens and the ark people would describe this important day in history in great detail — one fateful day, two rulers shaped the future of their people in the anteroom of a small spaceship.

There were only five people involved in the negotiations. The Queen of the Sirens and her two secretaries represented Io, while Lorenz represented the ark people. Hao Ren attended as an independent observer. There were also another neutral third party at the scene — Tiny Nolan, who sat at the negotiation table to record the proceedings.

In the end, both parties came to an agreement on the matter of leasing Io. The ark fleet was permitted to stay on Io in exchange for an ark, but for no longer than two hundred years. That was the duration agreed upon by both parties. If the ark fleet could finish their reparation works early and find another suitable place to settle for the long term, they would leave before the lease ended. If they could not find an alternative home after two hundred years, the sirens were open to negotiating a new agreement, such as extending the lease.

In fact, Katreina did not mind how long the ark fleet would stay on Io, since she and her people could not move back so soon. Io was deserted as it was. Even if they did return to Io, sirens were deep-sea creatures, and would hardly have much contact with the ark people living on the surface. The only time they would meet was probably when the fleet was leaving. Nevertheless, even if the sirens did not care about the lease period, they still followed traditional protocol and set the deadline at the conventional period of two hundred years. Both Hao Ren and Katreina knew that the deadline was only symbolic.

Lorenz did not disagree with any of the conditions from the sirens. He only asked that the sirens choose any of the arks in the fleet except for the Royal Throne. Since the ark people had lost much of their technology and control over the arks, the conditions agreed upon were executed with the help of the neutral third party in the negotiations, Hao Ren.

Once both parties were satisfied with the terms, both siren secretaries gave a physical copy of the agreement to Katreina and Lorenz, respectively. Tiny Nolan stood up from her seat. “This meeting is logged, and will be uploaded to the Civilization Supervision Department in 180 seconds-conds-conds-conds-conds.”

Hao Ren paused. “What’s with the repetition?”

Tiny Nolan pointed at tiny herself. “Maintaining the cargo hold and controlling thirteen arks-arks-arks-arks-arks at the same time can cause hanging-ing-ing-ing-ing…”

Hao Ren panicked. “Let’s get one of the arks to the Surface World first, and then you can stop maintaining that cursed massive cargo hold… I don’t understand how a cargo hold can use up so much memory.”

Nolan said, “It’s a cargo hold-hold-hold-hold-hold, one not fully compatible with this ship-ship-ship-ship-ship, and it demands so much computation power-wer-wer-wer-wer…”

“Stop talking, you’re making me jumpy.” Hao Ren waved the IDT off, and then turned to Katreina and Lorenz. “Your agreement is officially finalized, I will see to the implementation as a third party observer. We’re all friends here, but I’ll just stick to formalities and remind you of the following two points — firstly, both parties must adhere by the terms of the agreement at all times, unless there are extenuating circumstances; secondly, any extension or modification of the agreement must be done at my place. If any party tries to violate the agreement, I will interfere — tens of thousands of armed drones can reach Io within twenty four hours. Honestly, I don’t think they’re necessary.”

Lorenz stood up, looking solemn. “I will never violate the agreement for as long as I live.”

In an effort to reduce the load on Petrachelys’ systems and avoid any mishaps when flying the remaining twelve arks, Hao Ren asked Nolan to first transport the ark chosen by the sirens to the Surface World. Schematics and details of twelve arks, excluding the Royal Throne, were presented to Katreina. Nolan had prepared these information while performing checks on the arks. Hao Ren informed the Queen of the sorry conditions of these large spaceships honestly. “The truth is, these ships are all missing important working parts. The most important bit, he life support systems, are heavily damaged. In fact, the fleet had survived the later parts of their journey by borrowing parts from one another. If you are willing to wait, I can find parts from all the arks to assemble a complete, functioning ark for you… Lorenz is of the same mind.”

“Do not trouble yourselves with that.” Katreina studied the arks projected in the holographic display with keen eyes. Any one of these arks was much bigger than Nasaton and an asset so invaluable that they could only dream of having. “As long as the power source and propulsion systems are working, it’s enough. I don’t care about the life support system. Truth be told, life support facilities for humans are hardly useful for us sirens. It will only be wasted on us. The propulsion system is something that we can at least research on.”

Hao Ren thought she was right. “Then, please choose one.”

Katreine turned to her two secretaries to discuss, and then pointed at one of the arks. “We will have the Voyager, since it’s huge!”

Hao Ren had nothing to say to that.

Tiny Nolan heaved a long sigh. “I feel like I’m hanging-ing-ing-ing…”

Everyone waited in the Drone Nest as Tiny Nolan flew the Petrachelys to collect the ark of the Queen’s choice. Hao Ren really wanted to have a look at that brand new super-large cargo hold, so he let the IDT broadcast the collection live. He saw Petrachelys made its slow approach towards Voyager, and then a small bright spot suddenly appeared in front of the smaller ship. The bright spot looked like a star, but it expanded rapidly into shiny sphere that stretched over a few hundred kilometers in diameter, and continued expanding again. He could see distorted images of stars on the sphere’s surface — the sphere was actually a curvature in space. Since space was curved back onto itself, light from the stars was bent, resulting in an optical disturbance visible to the human eye.

The sphere would have been unnoticeable otherwise.

The space curvature continued to expand for a half minute until it was large enough to hold an ark over a hundred kilometers long. The ark slowly entered the region of the space curvature, which looked like the surface of a black hole, and soon vanished from sight.

After that, the sphere began to contract and return to a device on the Petrachelys. Nolan’s image appeared on the comms screen, looking more pixelated. “Collection is completed-ted-ted…”

“Alright, alright, go along with the IDT now.” Hao Ren could sympathize with her burden. “I can’t stand seeing you like this.”

After the Petrachelys was done with storing the ark into its cargo hold, the IDT in turn stored Petrachelys into its own dimensional pocket, and then left through the crack in reality on Tannagost to Earth. That was the whole process. It sounded a little bewildering, but for gods who had mastered the art of space manipulation, this little trick of multilayer dimensional storage was already yesterday’s technology. Nevertheless, Hao Ren huffed in annoyance. “The crack in space on Tannagost is too small. We need so much tech just to move something larger. Tsk, it’s so much work.”

Vivian could not help but roll her eyes. “Perhaps you’d prefer a large hole in the fabric of reality instead?”

Hao Ren clicked his tongue in agreement. “The universe is big, and we have only covered so little of it. Maybe there really is a large hole…”

Before he could finish, Lily and Vivian quickly put their hands on his mouth. “Shut up!”