Aleph took a deep breath.

She was actually really glad they were not under any major acceleration.

Over feasting on terra had always hanged on her in a way that was so wonderfully pleasant but also deeply uncomfortable.

She felt bloated right now, but nowhere near as bad as having her stomach hanging on her ribs and back. Feeling heavy at all was already starting to fade away again. Like it had when they first dropped from Terra.

Aleph however was still a little bit ill feeling anyway though. She hadn't eaten like that since Terra.

Even when it was all in abundance the rationing on the ship was pretty strict. If for no other reason then they had to grow every single thing they eat. Besides a few ‘extras’ provided by Pylo upon request that honestly made Aleph blush if she thought too much about it.

They were living a bit over subsistence levels for purely health reasons. Sure they had made an incredibly sweet sort of dense pastry for the anniversary celebration.

But the cake had been by all accounts while sugary and decadent barely a meal’s worth each for the terrans.

This feast though?

Aleph had GORGED.

And now she was still kind of feeling drunk on having done so. Which made the fact that Squidgie was trying to get her awake and ready to talk with the chief hospitilator a bit rougher.

She groaned and tried to clear the bleariness from her eyes.

“Wait, could you repeat that?”

Squidgie bobbed her head a moment.

“Ship Mistress Pylo will be indisposed and far too distant to provide translation services while she collects her correspondence from her family. As such the Chief Hospitilator will be collecting an escort group to act as interpreters, guardians and servants for the immediate future.”

Quarti was awake already and chewing on some kind of gummy stick while also vigorously rubbing it around her mouth between gnashing bites.

Omega was writing furiously in what might have been her twentieth journal? Squidgie had started ‘recording’ the first few and ‘cleaning’ them for re-use when it looked like she would run out.

“We are going to get servants?”

Squidgie bobbed her head again then looked over one shoulder.

“To be more precise the Chief Hospitilator is... hum I believe commissioning an estate for you? No not quite, it’s a bit more grand than all of that. There will be quite a dozen families at least brought aboard to handle the manual labor involved. Then there are the various masters, apprentices, novices, experts and well... It is all very extensive.”

Aleph blinked a few times, this was sounding like something far to heady to deal with after the massive feast that had required she sleep it off for-.

“How long were we asleep again? Wait how many people?”

Squidgie canted a glance to the assemblage of blocks that was Elsie which Aleph knew from long experience the Clerk did not need to make to communicate anything between the two. But it was nice they were being so overt about it that she could notice.

“Again only Nine Hours and Thirteen Minutes Ma’am. And about twenty thousand individuals if you include all of those that have been requisitioned to support your infrastructure in a direct chain of command. But you will only be directly dealing with a few of them for easier coordination and comfort, that is actually what I am here to prepare you for ma’am.”

Boggled a moment.

“Twenty thousand?”

Squidgie sighed and offered a friendly but long suffering smile in her abstracted screen of a face.

“Approximately ma’am, Do not be too concerned, it is not a serious imposition on them at all. If anything many of them will greatly benefit from the prestige of being involved.”

Well that was good at least.

“This does bring up the issue at hand Ma’am. There is a great deal of competition in receiving that benefit. As such the exact number and specifically who is actually going to be serving you is contingent on what is coming as soon as all three of you have had time to compose yourselves and are comfortable with beginning the necessary evaluations.”

Aleph looked over at Quarti who had finished gnawing/scrubbing her mouth with the squishy stick thing.

“We have to do an evaluation? Eugh, On what? I haven’t had a chance to scrub down in days Squidgie! I reek! I’m hardly presentable to do some sort of test!”

Squidgie shook her head and rolled her representation of an eye.

“Not a test, No Ma’am the People are awaiting your evaluation of their candidates. They await your comfort in doing so but there are many who are anxious to settle the question of necessary honor, fealty and several other proceedings before the potential candidates and their families have to begin returning to their positions of residence and duty.”

Quarti snorted at her and appeared to be rubbing some kind of phosphorescent jelly into her hands before drawing it across her face and then through her hair.

Aleph gave her head a hard shake and took a quick in and out of breath.

“Wait... They are waiting on us?”

Squidgie nodded.

“Yes the orders, guilds, clans and otherwise will have to adjust many responsibilities to support and replace those that will be dedicated to your persons Ma’am. But all of this will depend on the choices you make for direct representatives. The Eldest masters have already approved or delegated the selection and honed it down to only a few dozen candidates but they require your approval of those that will directly interact with you first.”

Aleph felt like her head was still kind of chugging along from all the digestion demanded by her stomach even after sleeping so long.

“So it’s... an audition?”

Squidgie nodded.

“Yes a demonstration of each candidate or group of candidates will be performed as soon as you three feel yourselves fit for presenting yourselves.”

Aleph looked down at her rumpled ‘finery’ She had picked a traditional festival gown but had not exactly planned to be sleeping, moving, dancing, singing and eating in it for the better part of a week.

It kind of made her nose curl in disgust. She felt scummy and sour in it.

Quarti interrupted with a cheerful “Yoj!” which drew Aleph to turn towards her, just in time to see the prophet that while not as mad as she had thought at the start of this strange new chapter in her life still resembled something quite perpendicular to normal logic or reasoning at least half the time.

Said prophet was peeling what looked like a grey and rubbery wad of mud off of her face and out of her hair.

It looked like filth incarnate but sparkled and pulsed with blue resonance and green phosphorescence as she kneaded it back into a orb a little smaller than Aleph’s two fists together.

“Here, try this pink a mena scrumbuckle! Izgudzestful”

She shoved the wad of stuff at Aleph just fast enough all she could do was hold her hands up to block it. The strange goop folded over her outstretched hands like dough, Then sank between her fingers with a faint sizzling fizz that felt almost cold and a little bit hot.

“Eugh! Quarti! What is it!?”

Squidgie however spoke up first.

“Miss Quarti requested a cleaning sponge from the Chief Hospitilator. It required a bit of exchanges with Miss Quarti, Elsie and myself but we found one that is quite accommodating of Terran allergens and immunocompatibility!”

Aleph stared at the goop that had continued to glow on her hands before eventually fading to a grey almost shiny claylike texture and color.

“What? It’s a sponge?”

Quarti shrugged.

“Not as good of an even-acid as me fav sludgo-gardiez or gastrolickers but iz gud clean given the short notice.”

She pulled one hand free of the stuff and squeezed her fingers between each other.

It actually felt... clean, if a bit raw and kind of tender in an odd way. No residue though, no slime, no oils. It even pulled the buildup from under her fingernails.

“This stuff is sterilizing too right?”

Quarti laughed and belted out in a nasty sort of accent that grated on the ears.

“Ohwz Totes baeguloa! Dey set deh stuff for things moxx morez virile dehn stunted feeble seed as terran! Iz wots the original mix wus For I had them calm and gentle it!”

Aleph eyed the stuff still lightly wrapped around one arm where it still fizzled and popped with blue and light green radiance.

“It’s for what?”

Squidgie grinned wide.

“It’s really quite ingenious, a variant of these are used when the people have a need for the clan of Ape Shearers. They woke up their grandest and eldest master of the art to consult on your well being and proper care.”

Omega seemed to finally join the conversation, most likely having hit a break point in her note taking by pure serendipity..

“Wait... Ape Shearers?”