Nick lay down in his bunk and thought about Earth.

Specifically, what the hell he was going to do when they got to Earth, to keep billionaires or militaries or evil scientists or whoever from fucking things up royally. He had been thinking about it off and on the whole time. Ideas came to him slowly, but he thought he was doing pretty well, since he had the time to think.

If we just took a shuttle down and landed, the closest military would pounce and dissect the fuakalas, dismantle the shuttle to learn how it works, and probably lock me up in the darkest dungeon somewhere, forcing me to make Petra print whatever they want. Fuck that noise.

Nick ran through all the science fiction movies and stories he could remember, and most of them just assumed things would go well and they magically worked out, because real world details would be a lot harder and messier. Stories about an alien visiting Earth usually ended up with the moral, "going to Earth was a big mistake," and the whole plot is getting the alien away from Earth again. Stories about AI usually were about the AI trying to take over the world and kill everybody, or else struggling not to get dissected or treated like garbage, so he didn't have a lot of hope for Petra being treated well either.

A lot of individual people are great. Big groups of people generally suck. So what do I do?

Do I give Petra to the US government or something? The UN? I mean, I could be a VIP so long as nobody threatened or killed me. If I was cooperating, they'd probably treat me well.

Nah. They'd rather force me to switch control of Petra to somebody they trust more. If the person is nice, though, the government wouldn't pick them. That's not gonna work.

Am I not going to give Petra to humanity? Nick turned that over in his head again. That would suck, but I might not have a better choice.

I shouldn't forget that if the Goldaskians show up in a year or two, and Earth hasn't managed to build enough defenses to hold off a Goldaskian fleet by then, then the aliens—that happen to look like demons—would rip the world apart until they found Petra and took it. Earth survived their first visit because we didn't have anything they wanted and we weren't important enough to kill or conquer.

The fuakalas really need this ship to save as many of their people as they can, and they're in a serious time crunch. So, I can't give them Petra while I keep the ship. At least, not for a long time yet. But I can't leave Earth without any warning, either. I've got to at least visit sometime this year, and the sooner the better.

He'd actually asked most of the Goldaskians what they would do if they wanted to set up trade with Earth. They generally said that they would trade "gold and gems and other things primitives like" in exchange for a lot of Earth's art, and maybe some spices. That wasn't what he wanted, so Nick had had to turn it over in his head a while before he thought of going back and asking, "How would you teach better technology to Earth people?"

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It turned out that there were manuals for that. The Goldaskians didn't have many in their computer, because they never thought they would need them. There were different kinds. All the ship had was one that taught how to make a printing press, another that taught how to make a simple radio, and a couple more like that. But, if they stopped by what they called a "civilized" world, they could download the whole set of manuals for free.

Petra didn't have any in her memory because apparently that wasn't part of her job. She had lots of blueprints, sure, but they didn't explain nearly enough. At least, Nick didn't think they did. So, the question was whether to risk letting the galaxy know that the Kalash-Quovo was in fuakala hands, in order to get the information Earth needed to ramp up its technology to defend against aliens.

Every time Nick had tried to think about this, he got a headache. But he kept coming back to it, because he needed a plan—one that didn't screw over Earth, the fuakalas, or Nick himself. If he was being honest, the last one was the hardest.

Nick worried that he was never going to be safe if he returned to Earth. People would hunt him down, unless he managed to disappear entirely. I wonder if Sana would be able to do plastic surgery on me and give me a new face? Nick wasn't at all sure he wanted to do such a thing. He knew he wasn't the handsomest guy, but he was okay and he liked his face. But he was kind of running out of better options.

Do I want to stay in space? Never go back to Earth? Maybe I can be well-off and live out in the galaxy. There's got to be ways to make money with Petra, even on a "civilized" world, without revealing that I have Petra.

But I want cheeseburgers. Pizza. Soda, steak, fish that isn't tuna. I want sushi. And fajitas. And all the foods of Earth I never got around to trying because I thought I always could later.

I want human contact. I want to be around real live humans again, including women. I want friends to share a beer with. I want to know who won the World Series last year, and the Superbowl. I want to see the latest sequels, and another season of my favorite shows. A blue sky. Green grass.

Nick wiped his eyes. Dumbass. You'll get some of that in a few months, at least. Just keep it together.

* *

He ended up spending a while with Dootha Korr, one of the engineers. Dootha helped him interrogate Petra for an hour between planets. The Goldaskian was curious about Nick's cell phone and asked a bunch of questions he couldn't answer, then mostly focused on Petra. They worked up a design for another brick that Nick could give to any humans he trusted. The brick had a USB port and would take eight hours for Petra to print. Fortunately, it didn't require a lot of rare materials. Nick figured he would print it out on the way to Earth.

The engineer also asked Nick a bunch of questions about how humans did technology in general and computers in specific. Nick couldn't tell him how anything worked, but he could tell him the kinds of things they did. Dootha came up with a bunch of other small items for Nick to print, and said they would be helpful.

I hope this little sucker doesn't take down the Internet, Nick mused. Well, they can plug it in to a computer that's not connected to anything else and see what it does. I know they've got some kind of quarantine thing for computer viruses.

Nick thanked Dootha for his help, and the engineer thanked him for an interesting puzzle. I guess the engineers get bored just like everybody else. Maybe that's part of why they all want to go someplace "civilized" soon.

We'll see whether we can get everybody most of what they want.

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