Which made sense. Poofs weren’t from this galaxy. My brain nudged, hard.
“Oh,” Tim went on, “James says to tell you that they do have sheep, opossums, rabbits, cows and bulls here—all dressed. All what we’d call normal sized, too.”
My brain nudged again. Ran through the songs on the Cosmic Thing playlist. I’d heard them so much that I had their titles and order memorized so I didn’t need to look at my phone.
“Ixtha’s explaining things as best she can,” Tim continued. “Their society is definitely utopian. No violence, they don’t eat each other, they have some kind of replicator things that allow them to make whatever it is their internal systems need to survive. Hang on, some of the team are going to check those out. Huh, most of the team. Sorry, that means I’ll be doing handshakes and stuff for a couple minutes, so as to keep these people at ease, and that’s an order from your husband.”
“Uh huh,” said to a particularly boring bit of information about airflow systems. The Blue Team was definitely scoring the far more interesting information share. It was also nice that Tim seemed to feel that I had all the time in the world. Chose to believe he felt that this meant I had the situation in hand, not that he was just so excited that he was forgetting that the Red Team wasn’t in Zootopia but were still hanging out in Apokolipse.
Wished I could share that there was a replicator here that Lilith was afraid of, but couldn’t come up with how to do that in this situation.
Telzor had covered all of volcanic containment and airflow issues, and White and I had gotten him onto how the platforms worked and how they chose where to dig one and why before Tim finally stopped shaking paws and patting backs and returned to our call.
“Okay, the others are back. Jeff says to tell you that their civilization has gone up and down in terms of technological knowhow. This current regime is more, ah, mystic than scientific. The food replicators are ancient—Wheatles and Grentix feel that they are easily as old as what we found inside the meteor spaceship. But they run perfectly. Wheatles feels strongly that they were created by an extremely advanced race and set up to run indefinitely somehow. We’re afraid to fiddle with them, just in case. Jeff says that, based on what you two learned from Wruck when you met the Mykali, these weren’t created by either the Z’porrah or the Anciannas, so the prevailing theory is that they were created by the same people who sent the meteors.”
“Interesting.” Telzor looked gratified that I gave their reasons for choosing where to dig a big thumbs-up.
“Oooh!” Tim sounded really excited. “Grentix says that, thanks to Serene’s help, she’s pretty sure that she’s found a way to break the code on the recording. And Wheatles says that he’s about ninety-nine-point-nine percent certain that he’s found a DNA listing. It’s long, like thousands of codes, maybe more.”
Cradle indeed. Well, Algar had to work with what he and I both had, in that sense.
“Ha, great,” Tim said. “Butler’s running these codes through his systems, it’s even faster than sending them up to the hackers. One is definitely the code for a form of chimp DNA. He says that the important thing for you to focus on is that he feels that everyone here, like the rest of us, have adapted to the planets we live on. The DNA he’s reading from the list Wheatles found seems purer than our DNA now. I have no idea what he means by that, though. Claudia and Lorraine are working on it while Serene and Grentix work on getting the recording to work.”
Was pretty sure that I knew what that DNA list meant, and had a good bet I was going to come up with what the girls did. Because everything had finally clicked into place and, besides, genetics were my jam. Meaning I knew why this solar system mattered, more than all the other ones combined.
“Telzor, do you have films here, movies? It’s a form of entertainment. Moving pictures, some are animated.”
He seemed shocked by this total subject change, not that I could blame him. “Ah, no, we don’t.”
“Pity. I would have loved to have shared a favorite of mine with you, called Titan A.E.”
“Holy crap,” Tim said. “You really think so?”
We reached the ground. “What I think is that it’s time for me to go meet Mad Lord Johpunnt and find out why he’s got such a hankering for the ultraviolence.”
Right on cue, my music changed to “Top Jimmy” by Van Halen and I heard it in both ears. Either Tim had hung up or, more likely, Algar had ended the call for me. Managed to control the Inner Hyena, but it took effort. Checked out the bulls. Nope, didn’t help. The Inner Hyena was really ready to roar.
Forced my mind back onto the platform and its Approved Design. Because it was part of all of this, too, in its own way. Managed to get back into the serious mindset of being about to meet the top man of this world.
Telzor stepped off the platform while Buchanan and White helped me off. Wisely. No reason for me to trip and fall flat on my face at this particular juncture. Roanach and Clorence hurried off after us.
The rabbits leaped off the platform and formed what might have been an honor guard around me, White, and Buchanan, but what I figured was more of a security setup guaranteed to not allow us to make a fast exit. The bulls went behind them, basically forming a wall. Yeah, Telzor might have been being nice on the long platform ride, but now we were all back to business. On the plus side, it reduced my desire to laugh, so there was that.
He led us down a long hallway. “I’m getting Nazez flashbacks again,” I said quietly to White and Buchanan in English.
“That’s why I’m here,” Buchanan said calmly.
Took us a while—Algar had time to change the song to Lifehouse’s “Smoke & Mirrors,” which didn’t tell me if I should feel that I was being fooled or needed to do the fooling, particularly since I’d been told by Tim that what we were seeing was real—but we finally arrived at two huge doors. Two of the bulls trotted up from behind us and opened them. Looked like they were straining to do so. Really wished I had more A-Cs with me all of a sudden.
Straightened up and did my best to look regal as we followed Telzor through the doorway, Roanach and Clorence scurrying along behind us, my music changing to “Get The Picture” by Kool Moe Dee.