Isabella also hires ticket-takers, gives them little pots of ink to verify the authenticity of the passes she handed out, and opens the Los Angeles - New York route for the employees of her three companies of choice and anyone who shells out a cool fifteen thousand dollars per round trip (ten K for a one-way). This is steep, but it's within an order of magnitude of what people sometimes pay for short-notice first-class cross-country flights - with less novelty and more hassle. Albeit she doesn't supply inflight meals. She expects to have to raise the price when more people hear about it in response to volume and then be able to drop it again.
By the time the thing has been open for a few days she's fired and replaced one ticket-taker and the others have settled into a routine that she's willing to try out leaving unsupervised for awhile.
If Adarin's up for some up close and personal planet shopping and his results suggest it'll go well, anyway.
Then he turns it to the planets they looked at. His results are the same as Isabella's - none of the current microorganisms on any of them can figure out what to do with the human body. With a bit of alarm, he does note that there is a virus on the toxic-crystal moon that could maybe manage it after a while, if given enough time and enough humans around. It's adaptable, and it switches species a lot. If they travel to the moon, they'll have to be careful of it.
He checks the mysteriously empty planet, and finds it completely safe of any murderous microscopic organisms that could harm humans.
With safeties in mind, he's up for travel. All required math for teleportation is completed beforehand, and Zeviana is given all notes for pulling Isabella and Adarin out in case something goes wrong. Grudgingly, she accepts - she'll scry them once every hour and if they look like they're in mortal peril, they will get yanked away.
Isbaella packs lunch and dinner, tells the person she recently promoted to manager that she'll be gone for no longer than a day and to continue business as usual and raise the price by five K if they get swamped, and then just because she feels like being cute she links elbows with Adarin.
It goes without a hitch. They arrive just outside of one of the cities, safe and sound.
"I believe," says Adarin smugly, "that we are the first humans to travel to another solar-system."
It's quiet, and pretty in a post-apocalyptic sort of way. "I think we could repurpose a lot of these buildings, wire in power and plumbing later - if there's plumbing it's probably not still functional and if there's power it won't link up to anything Earthlings currently know how to build."
She flies past a crumbled wall into a sixth-story room wherein there is one of those robots.
As soon as there's line of sight between them and it -
It rolls forward, halts at the edge of the building, bristles with threatening-looking objects, and says - something, too brief for the translation spell to catch.
Then he stops trying to figure out what the hell just happened and decides to do the obvious thing. He's practiced shields, and his slowest time was five seconds to think of a unique one.
It's so tempting for young mages to try and tell the air what to do, to tell it to protect them - but Adarin's learned that it's not worth the effort. As a rule, air does not like to stay still. At best it can redirect and slow things down, but it's not any good at stopping. He's not going to waste his time trying.
Instead, he works by location. In a perfect, razor-thin sphere around himself and Isabella, nothing will pass. He gives an exception to air, because suffocating them both is a bad plan. Light is a bit trickier, he doesn't want to give total exception to it - dangerous things can count as light, so he filters that a bit more carefully. Light can pass through and they can therefore see, but he puts it firmly in visual-only range. The result of this is that it tints the shield itself faintly indigo, since that was the most visible end point for what types of light could pass through and now indigo can only partially pass through. Some bounces off, instead, coloring the shield faintly indigo. There are other safeties he automatically adds. A contingency to prevent anything caught in the middle of the shield being injured or cut. The allowance of sound (he's less strict about sound protection than he is about light, but protections are there nonetheless) among other things. He has a list, he has it memorized, he is very thorough with his shields.
Reality, as it stands, does not like to have things that don't make sense. Magic, or at least, Adarin's type of magic, tricks reality into thinking things that normally don't make sense into making sense. With an object - that's easy enough. Tell it once, base it off of something it already knows, weave the spell correctly, and it'll do the equivalent of saying, 'Okay, that makes sense. Carry on.' The object then just exists, no problem, even if it does some things that break the rules. It does them subtly, not doing anything but the thing that made sense because mana told it to do that.
Shields are not based off of anything. There is nothing to blend in with the order of the rest of the cosmos. The existence of one is blatantly and obviously foreign. It did not exist a minute ago, and then it did. It stops things, absolutely, with no weight or mass or anything that would register as an object. It does not make sense. It does not exist.
His magic says otherwise. His magic wins.
But it continues to not exist. So he needs to keep telling reality that it does, using mana, over and over. His reserves aren't infinite, but if luck holds - he won't need to keep it up forever. Just long enough that they don't die from whatever it is that thing is pointing at them.
It takes him two seconds, in total.
"REPEAT YOUR CLAIM FOR VOICE RECOGNITION"
"We are peaceful visitors from another planet," Isabella repeats, shaking a little.
"VERIFY YOUR CLAIM"
"We... look... like aliens," she offers weakly.
"Please lower your weapons," repeats Adarin, looking angry. He could probably just break the robot, but diplomacy first. That is the logical route. Diplomacy first.
He is really, really tempted to break it, though. It's threatening his girlfriend, he is not fucking pleased with this development.
"Why did you expect enemies?" Isabella asks carefully.
"THIS SECTOR WAS EVACUATED BY NOBLE NNSARXPH"
"Will you attack if we fly away?"
"NO - YOU HAVE REPUDIATED ALLIANCE WITH THE INVADER C'THKBRRI SCUM - ALL UNITS HAVE BEEN UPDATED - YOU MAY PROCEED"
He hugs her back, obviously worried. "You're okay, right? No funky robotic mind control or invisible weaponry or - something? Because I will go back and break them all if they managed that."
"I was really spooked but - it bothered to ask questions, and answer them," she says. "I'm sort of inclined to believe the things it said. Feel free to check me over for alien robot mind control if you have a way to do that, I just can't think of a good reason for a robot to be designed to conversationally evaluate potential threats and then not shoot at, yet lie to, some of them."
"Well, the coming to life and asking questions I can explain, they were some alien faction's side during a war when all the aliens died and they have really good batteries. They ignore wildlife, I guess, but we don't look like wildlife, and they expect a decent chance we're invaders. And I guess the unpronounceable invader scum have a thing about not verbally denying their allegiance."
Adarin laughs. "I was - I was practicing with them. What, did you think I was just - grabbing the gummy worms and running off for no reason? I had a stopwatch, if I could get the layout of a completely unique spell for a shield in under three seconds, with all of my parameters, I got a gummy worm."
"Birthday first, though," he says, once the evil laughter of shared obnoxious couplehood is complete. "Right? Wait, when is it in the year, is it before or after your birthday? Because planned birthday presents aren't couple-based at all, just things I think you will like."
"I'm pretty calmed down and inclined to believe the robot about all units having been alerted that we aren't unpronounceable-scum. As long as we don't go too far from this city we're not at much risk of straying into unpronounceable-scum territory. And I packed both lunch and dinner."
"All right," he says carefully. "I'll avoid scrying if I can but use it if something seems suspicious. Should we -" (He winces.) "use the limited time we have here to investigate the cities? I am kind of uncomfortable with it, but we do need to be economic with mana."
The robots are dangerous, certainly, and this is risky. But he cannot see a logical reason for their actions if they didn't mean what they say. Maybe he's missing something, maybe he doesn't know the entire picture, but he's starting to get the feeling that he will never just know the entire situation before getting involved. If he tried to force impossible standards on Isabella's safety, he would be oppressing her.
He does not want to be the type of person that's clingy and over-protective, keeping Isabella in some kind of metaphorical box because he loves her. It would make him happier, certainly, but he's personally seen what that sort of control does to a person. Adarin very strongly doesn't want to do that, especially to the woman he loves.
Well. That kind of clears things up.
"All right," he says quietly. "I've calmed down, reasonably enough, anyway."
When they come across the one they met before, Adarin gives it a bit of a cold glare.
"Should we try talking to this one?"
"REPEAT QUESTION FOR VOICE RECOGNITION"
"Will - you - converse - with - us?"
"THIS UNIT IS EQUIPPED FOR VERBAL COMMUNICATION - THIS UNIT IS NOT OCCUPIED"
"Does that mean yes?"
"YES"
"When was that?" asks Isabella.
"FOUR HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN AND THREE QUARTERS YEARS AND SEVEN DAYS"
"Adarin," says Isabella, and she switches back to English, "can you tell how long the years on this planet are without using up too much mana or should we save it for when we go home?"
"One-hundred and forty-seven days," pronounces Adarin. "But they're days from here, and those're - ugh, about twice as long as days on Earth. That's annoying."
"PREVENT C'THKBRRI INVADER SCUM FROM TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE QUARANTINE EVACUATION TO OBTAIN NOBLE NNSARXPH TERRITORY"
"Over what time scale?"
"UNTIL OUR ORDERS ARE RESCINDED FROM THE CAPITAL COMMAND CENTER"
Isabella decides to push her luck. "Where's the capital?"
"TBLRRSAM" answers the robot.
English: "You want to see if we can find their capital and reprogram these things, maybe find other data on the invasion and get an idea if there are more robot factions?"
"NINE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-EIGHT CONTINUE TO REPORT THAT THEY ARE OPERATIONAL"
"The others are - broken down?"
"OTHER UNITS HAVE BEEN DECOMMISSIONED - CANNIBALIZED TO ENABLE PROLONGATION OF THE SERVICE OF CONTINUING UNITS - DAMAGED BEYOND FIELD REPAIR - DESTROYED - OR LOST"
"How many robots have had one of those things happen to them in the last - four hundred years?"
"TWO THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY SEVEN"
"All nine hundred and eighty-eight of the operational robots are working at full capacity?"
"YES"
"How many are in this city right now?"
"ONE HUNDRED AND THREE"
"And all these robots acknowledge that we are not enemies, and they will not harm us, and they will talk to us if we talk to them?"
"YES - ALL UNITS HAVE ACKNOWLEDGED"
"Do all the robots know the same things?"
"YES - INTERUNIT COMMUNICATIONS ARE FULLY OPERATIONAL"
"What authorization is required to alter robot orders from the capital command center?"
"THE AUTHORIZATION OF THE HIGHEST OFFICIAL OF THE NOBLE NNSARXPH MILITARY"
"...Who is that right now?"
"OUR DATABASE HAS NOT BEEN UPDATED SINCE THE DEATH OF SENIOR EQUIPMENT MAINTENANCE SPECIALIST VVIRT"
Isabella hesitates, then says: "What would happen if I told you I field-promoted myself to senior equipment maintenance specialist?"
"THE SYSTEMS OF PROMOTION CURRENTLY IMPLEMENTED DUE TO PERSONNEL CRISIS ALLOW ANYONE OTHER THAN THE VILE C'THKBRRI INVADERS TO SELF-ENLIST AND TAKE POSITIONS BELOW THE RANK OF GRAND HONORABLE CXCXPHG"
"So you'd acknowledge me as a senior equipment maintenance specialist if I told you to."
"YES"
"Do the vile Cithkbrri invaders have -" he searches for the right word "- have robots, too?"
"Did they, four hundred years ago?" asks Isabella.
"C'THKBRRI HAVE USED ROBOTIC FORCES IN QUANTITIES NOT EXCEEDING TWENTY-FIVE UNIT PROTOTYPE BATCHES OF AT LEAST FIVE DIFFERENT CHASSIS"
"So there's probably never been more than about a hundred fifty, two hundred fifty, Sthikbrri robots," interprets Isabella, "and if the loss rates are similar to these guys, they've lost more than two-thirds - and I bet it's worse because if they're different kinds they won't be able to cannibalize each other for parts."
"That helps, a bit. Do you want to be the senior equipment maintenance specialist, or should I declare it? We could maybe pull something where we both have authority, but I'm worried any leftovers of the other type of robot would figure it out and we'd have to blow them up rather than trying to recruit them, too."
"INVADER SCUM ROBOTICS IS MUCH INFERIOR TO THAT OF NOBLE NNSARXPH. ONE UNIT OF THIS TYPE WILL DEFEAT A SINGLE ONE OF THE VILE C'THKBRRI ROBOTS ONE HUNDRED TIMES OUT OF ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE. OUTNUMBERED INVADER SCUM ROBOTS HAVE INVARIABLY LOST CONFLICTS WITH UNITS OF THIS TYPE."
"NEW LANGUAGE PROGRAMS MAY BE ADDED AT THE CAPITAL COMMAND CENTER"
"Pity. Okay... oh - besides the invader scum and your own noble people - what factions were there on this planet as of four hundred years ago?"
"OUR VALUED ALLIES THE BBNNSKT - OUR VALUED ALLIES THE AMNRLK - THE ALLIES OF THE INVADER SCUM, THE NYSTBLI - THE ALLIES OF THE INVADER SCUM, THE ENSZZGRTE - OUR WORTHY NEUTRAL ARBITER THE RRRWEN"
"NO"
"If I start calling you 'Juniper', will you acknowledge the designation?"
"YES"
"Okay, so Juniper, if we - infiltrate invader scum territory, or their allies' territory, then if I've promoted myself to senior equipment maintenance specialist and made changes at the command center, will I be able to command an escort of you to come with me?"
"YES"
"NO"
"Can the invader scum's robots fly?"
"NO - ONE KNOWN MODEL CAN JUMP UP TO FORTY-FIVE MRR"
"How effective are their robots at attacking airborne targets? Or any stationary weapons they might have still operational."
"THERE ARE NO AIRBORNE TARGETS"
Isabella tilts her head. "Huh. They never invented airplanes, or at least don't have a word for them. Weird," she comments in English.
"How far can your weaponry fly up in the air if an airborne target were to appear?"
"Are the capabilities of the invaders' robots similar?"
"IT IS LIKELY BUT NOT GUARANTEED"
"Okay, so if I just fly several hundred mrr above the tallest buildings we should actually be fine regardless."
"YES"
"If I ask for instructions on - how you are built, how to repair you, would you be able to give them if I were allied with you?"
Long-term, that would help greatly for technology thievery. He'd already planned to do it with Earth's technology, why not do it with this planet's?
"'In the year 2007, several exciting discoveries all happened at once due to the activities of witch Isabella Amariah and her consort Adarin Evaniel Sorelas. Together, they brought portal magic to the world, revolutionzed robotics, and applied the proceeds from these activities towards dozens of others. In this chapter we will limit our focus to...' Like that."
He manages to recover enough to breathe and says between giggles, "Yes, that's -" (Snicker.) "- definitely the main thing history will remember you for." (Giggle, giggle.) "Nevermind the possible immortality, or anything. Senior equipment maintenance specialist."
"Oh! Adarin! How could you!" exclaims Isabella in mock horror. "That poor kitten. How it must have cried itself to sleep, still in the tree, wondering what could possibly be wrong with it that you wouldn't help it down! How it could have disappointed you and whether it would ever get another chance!"
"Oh heavens. Oh heavens above and planes eternal, time is of the essence, it was years ago, my hidden, secret shame - Isabella, Isabella if I'm too late you need to make something to bring back the dead. I can't live like this, I'm a monster. I have to make it up to that cat."
"Hey, robot," she says. "You still work?"
"THIS UNIT IS OPERATIONAL" says the robot.
"I'm gonna designate you Rosie, okay?"
"YES"
"Will you show us the way to the command center?"
"YES"
Rosie starts trundling along an overgrown path, rolling effectively over medium-sized obstacles.
Rosie leads them to what appears to be an entrance to an underground facility.
"Is this locked?" Isabella asks it.
"YES"
"Is it trapped or attached to an alarm system?"
"NO"
English again. "Okay. So I guess we get to finesse the lock with magic. I'll try to come up with a verse for it but if I don't get anywhere you can probably manage, or we can just note where this is for our next visit."
Eventually Isabella puts her hand on the door and says:
"Lock from centuries ago,
Let the door ajar,
Stand aside and open wide,
Unlock, release, unbar."
There is a grinding noise. The door unlatches and swings free - from hinges at the top, like a cat door, not from the side.
"I'm designating you Wisteria," Isabella tells this one, since Rosie hasn't followed them in.
"UNDERSTOOD" says Wisteria.
"Show us where the commands to the robots get issued."
"THIS IS NOT AUTHORIZED" says Wisteria.
"Okay... Adarin, what do you think, field-promotion or is there still a reason that might be a bad idea?"
"Do you have preferences about things? Is there something you prefer doing over other things?"
In the throat-abuser: "Do you have an opinion on something changing your programming?"
"ACKNOWLEDGED" says Wisteria.
"This makes me the highest ranked individual in the Nnsarxeph military, correct?"
"CORRECT"
"Conduct me to where new programming is issued and authorized."
Wisteria starts rolling down the corridor.
Soon enough they are at a place that is full of things very loosely recognizable as computers.
Isabella has Wisteria show her the on-switch, and then starts carefully poking around, with Wisteria warned to notify her if she's about to do anything that will damage the system or the robots it commands.
Eventually she locates some image files.
"These are apparently what the aliens looked like," she observes.
They were roundish, like the robots, but more centaurish under the smoothing layers of flesh, and had four arms with two fingers each and four legs that came to surprisingly elegant points considering their bulk. Their skin looked a bit toadlike, their eyes (four) were in their chests, and the females had spiny fins on their backs, shown erect in most pictures but relaxed in one sample.
"All those fours and for some reason they operated in base five."
"To be fair, humans have a lot of twos and we don't operate in base two. Or at least New Kystle and your country don't, there might be one that I don't know about that does."
Actually the translation spell wasn't designed to help with puns, but sometimes if he pokes it for a translation of a word it'll give multiple translations. Thus, it helps with puns anyway.
"Do you think you can design a translation spell that will do programming languages?" she asks when she's temporarily set aside the intel in favor of starting to carefully read the robots' code.
"YES"
"Please utter one sentence in each of them."
Wisteria complies: unpronounceable gibberish that fades into "- sentence", unpronounceable gibberish that fades into "- is", unpronounceable gibberish that fades into "- sample", slightly less unpronounceable gibberish "- this."
"Testing, testing," says Isabella in the fourth language. "This one is easier to pronounce. Not perfect, but decent. Who used it?"
"THE RRRWEN" says Wisteria, continuing in their language, "OUR WORTHY NEUTRAL MEDIATORS"
Utterly without incident, there they are, safely outside of their home.
"I should tell Ana she doesn't need to keep watch anymore. Also, successful return trip! Hurray!"
He is blushing, but Ranata wouldn't know that.
"So Adarin," says Path. "A few hours ago, sudden jolt of terror, took longer to wear off Vern than me - what happened that you forgot to tell us about when you came home? I kept expecting one of you to remember but you were distracted by adorable bantering. Which was admittedly fun."
Vern gives him a look.
"I'm sorry?" he manages again.
Vern nuzzles Adarin. "And you were excited about it and going to...?"
"Uh, study programming so I could try to make a spell that would help with programming languages."
"Ahh, that makes sense," says Vern.
"I'm still sorry," he repeats. Again.
"Yeah, you ask, 'truth or dare', and the other person picks one, and if they say truth they must honestly answer any question of the first person's choice, and if they pick dare they have to do a thing the first person picks, instead. This is mostly used by teenagers to make each other confess their crushes and make out with each other, it's kind of dumb."
He says that last part with a bit of irony. He's fully aware he is really, really guilty of that last one. Or used to be, anyway.