When I stepped out of my room, I found the residential area suspiciously quiet. The area was usually filled with the sounds of Issi and Eddie’s games or Jennifer’s tinkering, but when I stepped out of my room, there was nothing.

  I quickly slipped down the hallway and into the main residential area, only to find Jane and Alan sitting at the kitchen table. Calmly sipping some sort of warm beverages and reading their tablets.

  “Hey…Good morning,” I said, glancing around the area. “Where are the kids?”

  “Good evening, you mean,” Jane replied, lowering her tablet. “It’s almost seven in the evening. You missed dinner. There’s leftovers in the fridge if you want them.”

  “I’m fine. Nyx provided me with all the nutrition I needed while I went through my upgrade,” I explained casually as I strolled up to the table. “I did tell you it would take awhile.”

  “You did,” Jane replied, “but when you said it would take twenty-four hours, I thought you were exaggerating.”

  I caught Alan looking me up and down out of the corner of my eye.

  “Jane told me you were getting upgrades. You don't look any different than before,” he said.

  “That’s kind of the point of choosing bionics over cybernetics or synthetic upgrades,” I replied, turning on my little brother. “I didn’t want to change my appearance that much. Why? What kind of wild change did you think I’d invest in?”

  “I thought you’d want to be taller,” he replied, without batting an eye. Jane snorted.

  “What? That’s crazy; I like being this size. Can you imagine what people would say if I ran around with a ton of teddy bears as a regular-sized person? I’d look crazy!” I exclaimed, throwing up my arms, drawing another giggle from Jane.

  “I hate to tell you this, but people still think you look crazy,” Alan said as he turned back to his tablet. “It’s just that the locals are used to it, and everyone else is too afraid of the army of bears behind you to say anything.”

  “Hey, that’s also good,” I replied with a shrug. Since Alan didn’t seem to have anything else to say, I took a quick look around. “So, once again… where are the kids? I kind of expected them to be bouncing off the walls when I woke up. There’s a surprising lack of chaos and disorder in here.”

  “Nyx sent a couple of your bears to keep them company. They even set up a room for them to study and play in,” Jane explained. “It’s actually quite an impressive place. I’m going to request we build a similar space back in the shelter.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said warily. “I’d like to see this place first. For some reason I wasn't consulted, or even informed of these changes, so I'd like to actually see the place first."

  Surprise! Nyx exclaimed in my head.

  “Go ahead,” Alan shrugged. “It’s just down the hall. I did keep an eye on them at first, but your bears seemed to be doing an admirable job of entertaining them, and, as Nyx reminded me, I’m on vacation too. It feels good to have a little time to myself again.”

  Jane nodded in agreement as she took a sip of her beverage. “If you want to take a look, you better do it soon. The bears will be escorting the kids back for their bedtime soon.”

  “Fine, where is this place?” I grumbled.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  The door to the hallway shot open, and Nyx’s avatar stuck its head into the room. “Follow me, I’ll show you the way!”

  Jane and Alan didn’t even flinch at the sudden visitor. Either they’d been hardened after years of looking after the kids, or they’d grown used to the lunacy that seemed to follow me. Probably a bit of both.

  “I’ll be back soon,” I exclaimed as I headed towards the door. “We can start discussing places we might want to visit in Vancouver.”

  “Sounds good,” Jane replied casually, without looking up from her tablet.

  When I slipped into the hallway, and the door slid shut behind me, I stared at Nyx suspiciously. “A playroom? Why is this the first I’ve heard of this?”

  “I wanted it to be a surprise!” Nyx chirped. “I figured if you were all going to be trapped on this ship for a couple weeks, I could do something nice for the kids. Since you had one of the matter reconfiguration machines on standby, and it was extremely unlikely that we’d run into any issues on our way to Vancouver, I borrowed it to produce a few things.”

  “Define ‘a few things’,” I said, eyes narrowing, as I followed the bear down the hallway.

  “You’ll see!” Nyx declared.

  We didn’t go far, this supposed playroom was just a couple doors down. I glanced at the plaque next to the door before stepping inside, it read ‘Recreation.’

  As the door slid open, I was nearly blown away. I had expected a fairly small space, with a couple improvements tailored to each of the kids, with a handful of bears supervising them. What I found was a massive play area, with different sections tailored to each kid.

  Deadbeat and Jennifer were in the area on the left, crouched over a small, exceptionally well-equipped workbench. A bevy of new tools littered the area around them, including a miniature fabricator that was sitting on one side of the bench.

  The middle of the room held Eddie and Heavy. The pair were settled into a pair of plush chairs located in a reading nook completely surrounded by shelves full of hardcover books. Off to one side there was a heavy writing desk piled high with notebooks.

  Finally, on the right, was a huge plastic and rubber play center in the shape of a ship, where Issi and Bob were yelling at a small group of bears dressed as pirates.

  While the kids were occupied in their own areas, there was a central area with a handful of plush couches and chairs arranged across from a large monitor hanging from the roof. Around this area were a handful of low shelves filled with boardgames, in case they ever wanted to play together.

  “There’s no way you put this together in just twenty-four hours,” I muttered as I turned towards Nyx. “Explain.”

  “Well, I didn’t originally plan to go this far. Just a couple distractions to keep them from exploring and possibly getting hurt. There was an extremely low chance of that, considering how many bears you have on patrol around the area, but still a possibility,” Nyx said. “I was already halfwaythrough fabricating the distractions when you decided to accept Stalking Shadow’s request and load most of your troops onto the carrier. Since I had a couple extra days, I expanded upon the original plans and was able to go all out.”

  “Even with all the time and materials on hand, wouldn’t you need blueprints for all this stuff?” I asked.

  “I did, but I don’t think you understand how inexpensive Class 0 blueprints are. You see all those tools over by Jennifer? The entire package was less than five points. Issi’s play center? That just took some creative design and three points worth of designs for textured rubber planks. I received Jane’s permission for the purchases ahead of time, although I doubt she had any idea of the scale of the changes I was planning.”

  “You’re very proud of yourself, aren’t you,” I muttered.

  “Yes, I am actually. I’ve managed to make the kids happy and keep them occupied while giving Jane and Alan some time to themselves. A true vacation for everyone?”

  “And, what about me?” I asked.

  “Please, we both know that even though you’re supposed to be taking it easy, you’ll be spending half the time poking around the ship or trying to optimize bear production. You can’t help yourself,” Nyx replied.

  I didn’t reply to that. It was probably more true than I was willing to admit.

  “One last question,” I said as I surveyed the room. “How did you know that Issi would develop a pirate fixation during the trip?”

  “She may have been watching pirate shows prior to the trip, and someone may have pointed out that an airship is still technically a ship,” Nyx replied.

  “So you planned this and actually directed her to obsess on them during the trip? That’s devious!”

  “Maybe, but even with my titanic processing power I could only be 76% sure that my plan would work, and I’m 100% sure that her interests will change before the end of the trip,” Nyx frowned. “It’s actually a little frustrating.”

  “So the ability to predict and direct Issi’s behaviour with a hundred percent accuracy is even beyond the protectors, huh?” I chuckled. “I guess there’s some things even beyond the mighty protector’s capabilities.”

  Nyx shot me a quick look, but instead of trying to correct me they redirected the conversation. “Are you going to go in and join them?”

  “Naw… They seem to be having fun, and they’ll be coming back to the residence soon. Deadbeat, Heavy, and Bob seem to have things in hand. I’ll spend some time with them in the morning.”

  “We’ll be arriving in Vancouver tomorrow, so you won’t have that much time,” Nyx reminded me.

  “That’s fine, it’s going to be a long trip,” I replied with a smile. “We have plenty of time.”

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