Ellie gave us some basic instructions to already prepare Dusty for a somewhat bigger operation when we got the parts later. It included us having to open up Dusty and soldering a bit. Luckily for Ellie, Lauren was quite handy with that though, and she apparently also had some printplates lying around that suited Ellie’s plans too. 

“I am surprised you had these lying around, Commander.” Ellie said as Lauren finished soldering. 

“What can I say, I bought those just in case I needed them to fix Dusty with, never had to use them before, but I’m rather glad now I had them.” Lauren put the soldering station to the side. “Is there anything else we can do at the moment?” 

“Can you hook up your holo stick to the printplate slot?” 

“Sure thing.” Lauren nods and attaches the holostick to it with a small retractable wire. 

“What are you doing with it, Ellie?” I asked. 

“I’m just writing a small program for it. It will make it clean better and it lays the groundwork for what we want to do with it later.” After just a second of being attached, the small wire detached from the printplate and zoomed back into the holo stick. “Done. You can close it up again now.” 

Lauren did as Ellie had said. “And now we just turn it on?” 

“Yes.” 

With a press of a button on Lauren’s holo stick, Dusty’s propellers started zooming and after a quick spin up, Dusty was already airborne. Instead of flying off, however, Dusty kept flying around Lauren. 

“Uhm, this isn’t how it normally behaves.” Lauren looks at Dusty as it slowly flies around her. 

“Yes, I gave it a small AI program with a bit of a personality.”

“Ellie….” 

“I thought that since you gave it a name, you would want it to act a little bit more… independently too.”

“And why exactly is it hovering around me?” Just as Lauren said that, Dusty slowly flew closer and softly landed on top of Lauren’s had. It looked quite comical.  

“Because it sees you as her mother.” Ellie replied matter-of-factly. 

“Mother?” 

I scratched my chin. “Well, I guess you did assemble it.” 

“But Ellie wrote the program though.

“I’m just the aunt.”

Lauren sighed, rolling her eyes at the same time, and then smiled. “Well, I guess it doesn’t hurt.” She then carefully lifted Dusty from the top of her head and held it in front of her. “Dusty, could you go and clean up mom’s room?” She asked. 

The Dusty’s propellers zoomed twice, sounding quite enthusiastic in a weird kind of way. 

“Alright, thanks a lot.” Lauren smiled and put Dusty in front of her on the table, after which it quickly darted off up the stairs. 

The three of us followed it with our gazes as it went off. 

“Now I just hope it won’t get too sad when we go off into space again.” Lauren commented. “There’s no way I won’t bond with the little guy…” 

“Don’t worry, he’ll be fine, and if not we can always bring him along back on the ship. A personal cleaner bot was allowed, last time I checked.” I patted Lauren on the back. 

“Ellie, what in the name of the Goddess are you doing to us?” She laughed. “Now I’m already worrying about my auto duster. 

“Commander, I can’t help it that you quickly bond with things.” 

“I suppose that is true…” 

“And one of those things is me.” I stuck out my thing slightly 

Lauren chuckled at my comment. “And that is definitely true.” She leaned in to give me a kiss on my cheek. “And I’m very happy about that.” 

 

We continued chatting for a bit until Lauren started yawning. “Oh damn, looks like I’m more tired than I thought I would be.” 

“You did manage to do quite a lot of work today, I’m not really surprised you are. Did you manage to get some sleep in while I was taking a nap?” 

She shook her head. “Not at all.” 

“Ellie.” I turned my head towards the holo stick. “Could you leave us for the day? It might be best to get this woman into a bed before she falls asleep. I doubt I can carry her up the stairs by myself.” 

“Yes, I’ll leave myself out.” Ellie replied, her avatar clearly chuckling. “I won’t be calling tomorrow either to give you some privacy. That and I heard some technicians were coming around for some retrofits too.” 

“Alright. We’ll see you around later then?” Lauren asked. 

“Yes. When the time has passed for the parts to be delivered, I will contact you again. Have a nice day, you two.” 

“You too, Ellie. Take care.” 

“Bye bye, Ellie.” Once I had said my goodbyes, Ellie hung up the connection on her end. 

Lauren yawned once more and then stood up.

“Are you going to bed right now?” 

“No, I still want to drink a cup of instant soup if that’s alright with you.” 

“Can I have some as well?” 

She smiled and gave me a wink. “Sure.” 

As Lauren walked up to the kitchen counter, I stood up as well and followed her. I don’t really recall taking any instant soup with me from the store. “Do you have any lying around?” 

“I do.” She opened one of the top cabinets and reached inside. “I always keep a stash of it, since these things last forever. They are freeze-dried. Be warned though, they do taste different, even different from the ones we had on board of the ship.” 

“But you like them?” 

“Yeah, it’s a kind of comfort food for me. Well… As much as you can call them food to begin with, at least. They don’t really fill that much but that’s why they are nice to have just before bed.” She looked happily at the red box in her hand. She then shook it, the rattling sound indicating that it wasn’t empty. “Tomato soup good for you?” 

“Sure.” I nodded. 

Lauren started to boil some water with the water boiler and sat on the kitchen cabinet while we waited. Her yawning really wasn’t getting better. 

“I think I will sleep really well today. First time in quite a while in my very own bed.” She looked to the left towards the staircase. “As long as Dusty didn’t burn the bed down, at least.” 

“I’m pretty sure he is doing well.” I hopped on the cabinet next to her. 

Lauren almost immediately put her hand on my thigh. Not really saying anything, just smiling and listening to the water boiling. 

I put my hand on hers and just smiled back. That’s why I almost had a heart attack when the water boiler popped, signaling the water was now well and truly hot. It had made me jump of the counter in quite a hurry.

“Hehe.” Lauren chuckled. “You alright there?” She then hopped off the counter as well. 

“Just lost half my lifespan, I think.” I held my hand close to my chest. 

“Hey, don’t you dare die on me.” 

“I feel like that’s generally more my line than it is yours…” 

 

Lauren poured some of the freeze-dried soup into my cup, followed up with the hot water. Handing me a spoon so I could stir it around. She then followed it up with her own cup of soup. 

The soup cooled slowly as we kept standing. While Lauren had offered to me that I could take a seat again, I opted to keep standing next to her, leaning against the counter and watching over her living room. 

“I wonder what kind of house Eva lives in…” I pondered as the silence really made for a good environment for such a thing. “Have you been to her place?” 

Lauren nodded. “I have, only once before, though.” 

“And? What does it look like?” 

“Hmmm. Why don’t you guess for a bit?” 

“But I want to know!” I pouted. 

“I find it more fun for you to guess, though.” She smirked. “Now that you’ve seen mine, you should be able to make a guess, right?” 

I continued pouting at Lauren while I started thinking aloud. “She will definitely have her walls filled better than you do.” 

“I mean, that’s a given, isn’t it?” Lauren laughed. “Mine are practically empty.” 

“Hmmm… For some reason… When I try to imagine it, I see a lot of posters.” 

“That’s actually a rather good guess.” Lauren admitted. “When I was there, she had a lot of posters from bands hanging around the place. Now that I think about it, it’s probably posters of citypop bands. She does like listening to that kind of music.” 

“Wait, you saw the posters and you didn’t bother to ask?” I countered. 

“Well… I’m sure I meant to ask it, but it had just skipped my mind at the time. You know how it goes, you want to ask something to a friend of yours but then the conversation doesn’t go that way, and then you are talking about something completely different and in the end you just outright forget what you wanted to ask in the first place.” 

“I can’t say I’ve had something like that happen to me yet.” 

“Don’t worry, it will come in time. Especially if you keep hanging around which us humans, and dear Goddess, I sure hope you do keep hanging around me.” 

“You romantic, you.” I blushed. 

“I know.” She giggled and sipped from her soup.