Total pages in book: 53
Estimated words: 51003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 255(@200wpm)___ 204(@250wpm)___ 170(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 255(@200wpm)___ 204(@250wpm)___ 170(@300wpm)
And since they could hear what was going on inside anyway, they always knew when it was safe to interrupt.
“Did you have any kind of locks on your doors on the spaceship?” He set my stuff down on the bed, which seemed to be the signal that I could finally start helping…nesting and all that. “I know there were some documentaries but they were on the engines and technical parts.”
I’d been hoping for Star Trek and I’d gotten engineers droning on about stuff that made no sense at all. It’d been frustrating and the show had gotten such low reviews from the average viewer that they’d stopped doing any more.
They’d learned the wrong lesson, but I was hoping we’d get better movies in the future now that we were getting better books.
“Not in the way you are picturing, my Colby.” Saint walked around the room, opening up a closet and showing me that there were drawers under the bed that I hadn’t noticed. “Our method of isolating sounds between rooms made it necessary for privacy.”
Made sense.
“So you had something to keep people from accidentally wandering in when you wanted to be alone but it wasn’t really about protecting your stuff?” When he nodded, I pictured something like the doors in Star Trek. “Why don’t you have the same problems with theft like we do? Someone said you guys started off more aggressive than we are?”
Picking up the food, Saint looked thoughtful as he carried the snacks and stuff over to the counter. “We were highly territorial and that led to stronger aggression than is found in humans. You are more cooperative by nature. We had to learn ways of working together. Our evolutionary process seems to have been longer than yours.”
“Seems to?” Taking my work clothes over to the half-empty closet, I hung up the shirts and pants I’d need for the next couple of days. “Don’t we know that?”
“There are questions.” Saint was taking organizing the new food supplies very seriously and frowned as he rearranged them for the third time. “Your planet has been significantly damaged through a variety of ecological disasters. It has made it hard to accurately document a timeline.”
Well, between the shit we’d done to ourselves, stuff like volcanos, and falling crap from space, it probably wasn’t a surprise that we didn’t have good records.
“Are you guys working to help with that?” It seemed like stuff they’d be willing to research since we couldn’t kill ourselves with it.
“We must rebuild that science first.” Saint’s wiggly shrug didn’t make sense until I thought about the words.
“You guys don’t have the scientists that look at the archeological record and stuff like that? I have no idea what the right titles are but I know there are lists of them running around trying to figure out what happened in the past.” I thought I’d misunderstood until he shook his head, making a clear human gesture for me.
“We reached a point where we understood our planet.” Giving me another shrug, he came over and picked me up. When my legs were wrapped around his torso and he had me snuggled up tight, he rubbed my back like he thought I was stressed. “When we understood, we moved on to new science and reached for the stars as humans have said.”
Wow.
“You always know everything, so it’s kind of weird to hear that you have to go backward for us.” It definitely wasn’t the first time they’d had to do that, though. “I haven’t heard about that on the news. I need to pay more attention.”
Shifting me to the side, he picked up the stack of T-shirts I’d been folding and put them in a drawer under the bed. “Humans have not asked about those plans.”
We didn’t ask, so they hadn’t volunteered.
Someone needed to fix that.
“How did you hear about it?” The conversation was more interesting than where my underwear was going, so I let him keep putting things away. “Are there newsletters I need to sign up for?”
That had Saint pausing mid-sock sorting and his head cocked. He was so cute when he played human, but I tried not to let it distract me. “We have organized what humans call message boards and have established a variety of websites devoted to what might be called news. It is species specific, however, and is not written in English.”
“Oh, that sucks. You’ll have to read it to me.” That’d be just as much fun as the dirty book plan, just in different ways. “Is that okay? Is it secret? What kind of news is on there? I couldn’t learn French so I don’t think I can learn your language but you won’t mind reading it to me. I’m yours.”
The head pat he gave me said I was back to looking cute again, but I was just glad his worries seemed to be fading because he even put me down. “Yes, my human. I will read our news and information segments to you. There is nothing secret. Humans do not ask.”