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Being so civilized, Nar Valdum had full monitoring of all traffic coming onto the planet. Frankly, I don’t like civilization.
“Dip, I am growing impatient.”
“Would you like to play twenty questions, Rico? You think of something, and then I’ll try to guess it. It will help me learn.”
“No, Dip, I want ground control. Any indication of how much longer we have to wait?”
“They simply say we are in a queue and will get to us soon. So, do you want to play twenty questions?”
Didn’t have much else to do. “Fine. I thought of something.”
“Is it animal, vegetable, mineral, or other?”
“Other.”
“Is it violence?”
“Yes.”
Dip processed silently for a moment. “That game did not help me learn anything.”
“Life is full of disappointment, Dip. Perhaps you learned that.”
“I already derived that knowledge, Rico. I have good news for you, though: ground control is hailing us.”
“This is Nar Valdum ground control,” came a voice over the ship’s speakers, “What is your business here?”
My guess is that a normal person would be a little irate at this point, so I decided to go with that. “Landing– not just floating here all day.”
“We are sorry for the wait, but security measures have been increased because of the sentient species diversity conference. Are you here for that?”
“Yes.” Increased security measures? This job kept looking like more and more fun.
“How long is your planned stay?”
Five days. “Seven days.”
“How many sentients are aboard your vessel?”
“Just me.”
“Species?”
“Human. Haven’t you scanned my ship?”
“Just confirming data. Does your ship have weaponry?”
None you’ll find. “Just basic defensive measures… if you’d call them weapons.”
“Your course for landing and ship identification are being sent to you. Please keep the ship identification in your memory banks for the length of your stay.”
I checked the onscreen map. “That’s a completely different continent than the conference!”
“Security measures,” ground control answered. He sounded weary.
“Good to know I’ll be safe, at least.” I ended the communication. “Dip, take her down.” Hopefully they wouldn’t try searching my ship when I landed, or my initial stay would be short and bloody.
“While we’re landing, I have something for you to try guessing in twenty questions, Rico.”
I manually accessed Dip’s memory buffer and looked for an unusual sequence repeated over and over. “Is it a shoe?”
“You cheated.”
“Hope you learned something from that.”
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