Dean was shocked when Lisa and Bath actually managed to fly an intact alien space ship into Jure's immediate vicinity. Granted, it looked more like a long train than a space ship because of its bizarre twenty-foot diameter and several-mile-long length, but it was still a sleek, flying vessel.

I don't have time for this, he thought, sighing and turning back toward Aberash. Her silky hair lay over one of the Spire office's couches, her head inclining back over one of the couch's arms.

"What's up?" she asked.

"I've gotta go," he said. "They're back."

Aberash's eyes grew wide. "The Church and Dragon? You're meeting with them again, alone?"

Dean gave her a complex look. "I'm in charge of the vanguard; it's kind of my job to meet with them."

"Wait..." she said, pushing herself upright and squinting toward the windows. "Is that...what I think it is?"

Dean snorted. Though it was pitch black outside--even the city's bioluminescent mosses naturally dimmed just before dawn--the shine of the approaching vessel was barely visible as an outline in the sky.

"What do you think it is?" Dean asked. She almost sounds like she recognizes the ship.

"A worm."

Dean scowled and cocked an eyebrow. "A worm? What kind of worm is that big?"

Aberash smiled. "From this angle, it also looks like a bullet, coming right~ toward us."

Dean opened his mouth, running his tongue over his teeth. "Uh-huh." More like a bullet train than anything else. He shook his head as he headed for the balcony, intending to jump off and run to greet the approaching ship. His natural instinct was to help them land the craft, but then he remembered just who he was dealing with. The day that Bath genuinely needed his help seemed, to Dean, a day that would never come.

"You're really going?" Aberash asked from the office, her voice carrying softly into the hall before the balcony. Dean paused, his head turning slightly to the left, though still facing the balcony.

"Yeah."

"Dean, it's an hour before dawn."

"And?" he stepped next to the balcony, leaning into its edge.

"Nothing." Aberash sounded bitter.

"What were you expecting?" he said, staring out into the hazy black.

"Nothing," she repeated, though this time her voice seemed resigned. She sighed, then said, "I'll see you later. Tomorrow, same place as today?"

Dean smiled, the action pained, not that anybody was watching. "Can't wait to hear you practice with the ricochet drums."

"See you then," she murmured, her voice barely audible. It wouldn't have been audible save for Dean's enhanced perception and hearing.

Part of me feels like it was better to be ignorant about everything, Dean thought as he dropped down into Jure. Before COTD, the socially-awkward Dean followed along with the crowd and was generally overlooked by all women. Now that he had power, the opposite seemed to be true.

Which was a problem, considering that Dean was extremely aware of this fact due to his recently-increased social awareness. Moreover, it was a problem because Dean had zero experience with anything...romantic.

I really do like hanging out with Abbie, he thought as he leapt over a series of rooftops, but...she wants something more, obviously. And I'm not sure what I want. I already told her I don't want to date, that I don't have the time...but isn't what we're doing every night, me listening to her practice...isn't that practically the same as dating?

His thoughts jumbled into a tangled mess as he bounded over the sand, clearing several dunes with each stride. Dean almost lost his balance and dove head first into the sand when, seemingly out of nowhere, Bath appeared in front of him.

"Dean," Bath said, smiling.

Dean regained his balance, digging his heels into the sand. "What!?" he asked, somewhat out of breath from surprise alone.

Bath's grin widened. "You're getting better," he said. "You sound annoyed, a clear step up from uncertain or fearful."

Dean stared at Bath with his mouth open. "Okay, well, I'm sure you didn't come down from your shiny new ship to tell me that."

Bath gave Dean a knowing look. "Get the engineers ready," he ordered. "We're landing the ship on Jure's southern side."

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Relative to Basalith, right?" Since Jure was technically the same "base" city as Basalith, all of its structures were the same. This being the case, as long as Dean knew which side of Basalith faced south, he would be able to determine the "southern" side of Jure.

"Precisely," Bath said. He began to pace around Dean, giving the vanguard leader the sense that he was being judged. You don't even need to look at me, Dean grumbled internally. You probably know everything there is to know about me by now. Considering that fact that Dean had originally served as Bath's guinea pig, this assumption wasn't inaccurate.

Dean swallowed. "I think I can take it from here, then," he muttered, turning around to return to Jure and wake the residents of the engineers' apartment building.

"What are you doing with your fingers?" Bath asked.

Dean paused mid step, turning back around. "Um, it's a thought-to-text thing."

Bath's brow furrowed. "How does it work?"

"I think of something, and the program reads my brain waves or something and transcribes the thought." Dean still wasn't sure how the application worked.

"Why are you still moving your fingers like you're playing a piano?"

"Macros," Dean explained, shrugging. "I'm sending messages to people. I think of a name, or names, then use a series of macros activated by finger movements to coordinate the format of the messages and send them off."

"You're sending messages now?" Bath asked, seemingly incredulous that Dean would be sending messages in the middle of their conversation.

"You told me to wake the engineers," Dean said. "But I also have many more people in the chain of command that I need to wake up. The space ship is going to touch down in a matter of minutes." If I didn't multi-task like this, I'd never get enough done.

"You know what I think you need?" Bath said, looking Dean intently in the eye. "A break."

Dean rolled his eyes. He's just like everyone else. "Do you get a break?"

Bath grinned. "Yes, in fact. Lisa and I took a tour of Illudis."

Wait, really? "Well..."

"And we've been essentially relaxing our entire time here."

Dean's mouth quirked. That's possibly true. I assumed they were both working on something important...but they could also just be lazing about. "I don't mean to insult you," Dean said, "but don't you think you ought to be working a bit harder?"

Bath laughed, gesturing back with a hand. "We've brought back a ship," he stated, his jovial gesture quickly turning predatory, his eyes...hungry. "What else would you have us do?"

Way to open a can of worms, Dean thought. He opened his mouth to speak, but words wouldn't come. Actually, I can't think of anything I'd want him to do off the top of my head. Maybe help people perfect their boons? Continue developing new kinds of quasi-sapients? Help the verdora get caught up?

However, all of these points seemed more or less trivial. People needed to perfect their own boons. Vast Desert wasn't the proper place to start making new kinds of quasies, especially when the newly-arrived quasi bears were eating a good 10% of all food sent from Illudis. Finally, the verdora needed to progress on their own--short cuts wouldn't help them in the long run.

Dean thought about himself, noting that his current position was wholly the result of Bath's direct intervention. Kind of hypocritical of me to discourage the verdora from taking short cuts, he thought. However, he stood by this point of view: while Bath had undoubtedly given him a head start, at the end of the day, Dean had still worked diligently to master all of COTD's primary boons. Bath had opened the door to power; Dean had chosen, for better or worse, to step through it.

"Sounds like you have nothing to say," Bath taunted, grinning devilishly.

Dean sighed. "You know what you could work on?" Can't believe it took me a few seconds to think of this.

Bath cocked his head.

"Figure out a way to stop messing with my head," Dean stated. "What happened back when Basalith was fighting against the U.S. military...it wasn't normal, nor was it morally just. Civilian people don't just...rip into soldiers with smiles plastered on their faces."

Bath's eyes narrowed, his smile falling. "Dean," he said, tone serious.

Dean cut him off. "I don't want to hear a justification or explanation," he said. "Just think about it."

---

Bath watched as Dean bounded away, quickly disappearing from his line of sight. The ship was two miles from Jure, having traveled only three miles during his conversation with Dean. The Arc could reach air speeds of up to four-hundred miles per hour; however, upon nearing Jure's vicinity, Bath and Lisa had instructed AI Ninety-Seven to lower its speed to a crawl as they prepared to land.

He dispelled his avatar, devoting all his attentions to the inside of the Egdelek Arc. Lisa had been questioning AI Ninety-Seven for the better part of the past five hours, almost as though she thought the android would disappear into thin air, along with its accumulated knowledge, at any moment.

"So why do lots of sapients look alike?" she asked. "The first non-human sapient species I ever encountered was a deepthink, which can pass for a human as long as his eyes are covered." Or I change their color, Bath thought. "Plus, in the encyclopedia, lots of sapients all look the same: species like verdora are complete outliers."

If the android was tired of Lisa's incessant questioning, it didn't show. "The theories in response to your question numbers in the millions," the android replied crisply.

Lisa sighed. "I was hoping you wouldn't say that."

Bath knew that Lisa had spent a good deal of time researching into this issue independently, using the encyclopedia as a resource. She'd complained to him several times about the fact that every encyclopedia article she found regarding the convergent appearance of sapients spouted a unique explanation for the phenomenon.

"Can you discuss the most commonly-accepted theories?" Bath asked.

AI Ninety-Seven inclined its head. "Are you ignorant of them?" it asked, eying Bath.

He still thinks I'm a native...whatever this four-eyed sapient is. Clearly, whatever species the android--and by extension, Bath--was modeled after was advanced, probably originating from a planet close to the core. If there exist millions of theories as to why most sapients look similar, I assume that it must be a subject warranting discussion in a classroom environment. If I truly was from wherever the android thinks I'm from, I probably would know the prevailing theories on sapient convergent evolution.

"AI Ninety-Seven," Bath said, turning away from the near-black window of the Arc, "I am not...whatever you think I am. A Fezosisn."

The android narrowed its four eyes. "I already knew this: you're completely ignorant of the organization."

It's an organization? I thought it was a species. "What kind of sapient are you emulating?" Bath asked.

The android gave Bath a worried look, though responded to the question. "I am made in the image of a stohmfig."

Bath nodded stoically. "I am not a stohmfig."

"He isn't a kursi, either," Lisa said, giving the android a pointed look. "That's me," she said, jabbing her chest. "Anyways, can you please go over the theories? I'm dying of curiosity."

Bath nudged Lisa's shoulder. "We should discuss this later," he said. "It's time to land the vessel."

"Ainsley," Lisa called out, "Bath's right; we can talk about this later."

Bath rolled his eyes at the nickname.

"I shall land the ship," AI Ninety-Seven stated. "However, I am unsure where to land."

"Lisa," Bath began. "Fly outside and make a fiery trail for AI Ninety-Seven to follow. I told Dean to wait for us to touch down on Jure's southern side, by the wolf apartments."

Lisa smiled, darting out of the control room and out of the back of the Arc. In less than a minute she was ahead of the ship, painting red into the dark of night for the ship to follow.

"How are you not stohmfig?" AI Ninety-Seven asked as it maneuvered the ship behind Lisa.

Bath glanced back. "I'm not."

"How?"

Bath maneuvered several avatars into place on the ground, coordinating Dean's assembled engineers. "You'll figure it out."