chapter 26 #free Tickles (work in progress)

soon they arrived at the satellite located at the edge of the central Sun federation galaxy, but only debris were left, after the spyware failed, the culprits made the satellite self destruct, to make sure they couldn't find any evidence of their misdeeds

Phoebe said "a self-destructing satellite, commander perry take a team and collect every piece of it I have an idea, maybe our trail won't go cold"

commander Perry said "yes, ma'am"

the team started to collect all the pieces of debris they could find, and while working Ronald and commander perry were chatting

Perry asked "you said a kid found out about the virus"

Ronald said "yes, but I don't know where he comes from"

Perry said "there was a voice going around that the admiral was pregnant, maybe it's true"

Ronald said "I don't know, I couldn't feel any spiritual energy from the kid, and those eyes, I've never seen that shade of cyan eyes, I don't know why but while looking at them I had a strange feeling, similar to being lost"

commander perry totally dismissed what he said, anyway it's not something they should poke into, and said "let's finish, I wonder what idea she had, usually in situations like this, we just send what we know to border patrol and it becomes their problem, this kind of people isn't even a threat, or the protector would have taken notice of it"

Ronald looked at her and said "maybe you are right, well see"

they brought all the debris in, and the ship went back to verulus in the afternoon, Phoebe and commander Perry arrived, and she went to put the debris in the loading/unloading area to the left of the castle, since the satellite was 30 mt high and 10 mt in width, when it was intact, so it produced a lot of debris

but as Phoebe and commander perry approached it, they found a big surprise waiting for them

that morning as Phoebe went out, there was no need to quarantine tickles again for the moment, so Joseph decided to observe how both behaved, and just told Daniel to pay attention, then they had breakfast, and soon later a delivery arrived

a woman flew to the portal and announced herself "good morning I am Reina sparrow here on behalf of sparrow logistics, to make a delivery"

normally deliveries wouldn't be so formal, but this was for the presidential family, and the packages were a lot, formality was required, and the young CEO of sparrow logistics wouldn't leave this opportunity to show her face being wasted by sending someone else

Daniel said "it was fast"

Joseph said "wait here, I'll go get it"

joseph went out and arrived in front of Reina, that immediately with sparkling eyes asked " tune sage I'm a big fan so I had to come to deliver personally, can you autograph this for me" while giving him a poster that retracted Joseph at one of its concerts

Joseph used to this kind of treatment smiled and said "sure" signing the poster for her then showed her the way inside, Reina still smiling took out a black spatial crate that had all the things Daniel ordered inside, and asked "where should I put them, there is a lot of things inside"

Joseph said "you can unload them there" pointing at a paved area on the side of the castle

as she unloaded a lot of things appeared, metal bricks, rocks, sand, even a tank of seawater, and pressurized cylinders filled with different gases, Reina didn't know what to think, but she knew where she was and didn't care much anyway so she didn't ask any question

Reina was just happy meeting her idol, and after she finished, she gave Joseph her greeting card and left, she wanted to find an excuse to take a picture together or something but she was a professional and couldn't behave too much like a fan

Daniel was really happy, he had the resources, and tickles was free, with a thought he ordered tickles to get to work, and a small silver scaly dog exited the hexagon and went into the loading area

tickles turned back to is natural state, as a colony of ridiculously small robots and started treating the raw materials, and refine them, and as soon as he had enough a chemistry bench appeared, complete of Becker's, pipettes, Bunsen, the whole process took maybe 40 minutes, even if it's just furniture it was a really short time from raw materials to finished product

during the process daniel felt like he was Tickles, he remembered the process like he was the one doing it, this was the first time for Daniel, to understand how it was for Tickles, seeing things through him, and he liked it, it gave him a front-row seat in the process, and insights on how to improve it

before lunch, Daniel asked Joseph for help to bring up to the ex ballroom now turned laboratory the furniture and equipment he created

but he also realized how limited he was in this tiny body, and wished he could grow faster so he wouldn't have to continuously ask for help, afterwards he had lunch with Joseph, and then went to see Sophia, with a request

Daniel said "hi grandma"

Sophia said "hey kid, what's the update?"

Daniel told her everything and Sophia said "those jerks, phoebe did good, she has to hunt them down, how dare they"

Daniel said "anyways now that tickles is free, I was wondering if you were ok if I used them to study the tablet"

Sophia said "if you can pass rose's security measures, your free to do it, but don't get your hopes up"

Daniel said "thanks grandma" then he went to the deckchair and ordered tickles to invade the tablet, absurdly enough, even if they could take control of the hardware, he couldn't access the hard drive with the books on it, and going the software route, tickles was thrown out in the cold, by rose's security measures as Sophia called them

luckily since he had the password and could read the contents, he could still make some adjustments with tickles help, so he could now read much faster, it wasn't much but it was good enough for now, and while he was reading he heard "what is this?"

Daniel got up and went towards the loading area, only to find Phoebe and a woman full of defined muscles in front of his piles of resources

Daniel said "welcome back mom, did you catch them?" while walking toward her, commander Perry's eyes lit up, and she thought "it's true"

Phoebe said "no, the cowards fled, actually I need your help to find them" shocking commander perry "his help?"

Daniel said "what can I do for you?" happy that he could help, and completely ignoring commander perry

Phoebe said "I need tickles to extract every bit of data, from what's left of the satellite"

Daniel said "sure where is it?"

Phoebe said "it's ok if I put it here? it's very big"

Daniel said "sure, I can recycle whatever its made of, don't worry" already happy about the free materials

Phoebe said "that's not what I meant, but ok after you send us the data, the debris is yours"

Daniel happily ordered tickles to get to work, and in the meantime, Phoebe said "I know you were starting to like the game, I'm sorry but after a talk between Vincent, Obelix and Andrea it has been banned"

Daniel said "it's ok, I will concentrate on my experiments now that I have all I need, and if I ever miss playing I can create my own in the future" he really didn't care anymore about the game, but at the same time was already plotting to make his version in the future, with real science in it, not all that ridiculous stuff

soon later tickles transmitted back what he found and daniel said "they tried to wipe the memory but tickles found some pieces of information, apparently the satellite was built by the curombian civilization, there's a recipe for a soup, and a mail from gregosh some kind of code, probably to activate self-destruction, anyway, that's the guy I met in VR, the mail passes through too many satellites to pinpoint an exact location, but it comes from somewhere in the black-eyed galaxy, according to the public star charts of the federation that's a prohibited zone, that's all, a copy of the data recovered as been sent to you"

Phoebe said "good job Daniel, it seems that you can control them well, so for now we will let them stay out"

Daniel smiled happily, then said "maybe next time see if you can bring back some robots or spaceships, this satellite it's really pitifully low quality"

Phoebe said "take it slow, are you trying to go to war with someone?"

Daniel said "no, but it was fun to pilot the ship in the game I want one to pilot in real life, so I'm going to build it"

his aspirations were whatever he felt like doing, but to Phoebe, it sounded bold and ambitious, just like she became after Sophia saved her

Phoebe looked at daniel with pride and said "keep it up, I'm going to work"

Daniel said "bye mom, have fun" before going back to reading

phoebe and commander perry exited the Specter dimension and called an emergency meeting to discuss the threat

Phoebe said "and that's how it is, apparently they think all cultivators are banded together against them, because of whatever nutjob started hunting them down, basically they're terrorists in the making" ending her speech about the newfound threat and bringing everybody up to speed

Andrea's clone was substituting Vincent while he was away and said "we can't go bully inferior civilizations like the curombians, and the black-eyed galaxy it's owned by that person, we don't want to fight her, for almost a million years we had a silent agreement to ignore each other and avoid to step on each other toes, so the request it's denied, we will fortify border security and that's it"

Phoebe said "but they" but she couldn't finish

Andrea interrupted and told her "trust me I know, but that thing, it's not to be trifled with" ending the discussion

Phoebe went back home angry and unwilling, but there wasn't much that could deter Andrea so she knew whatever the deal with that galaxy is, its nothing good

back at the castle, Phoebe found that most of the satellite pieces were already recycled, and various metal ingots and other materials were neatly stacked, to one side she could also see Daniel who was sitting in a chair sipping juice and reading, while on the other a pool of silver metal worked with no rest, recycling and refining