Monroe-Chapter Four Hundred. Catching up.

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"On a personal note, welcome back, Mr. Whitman," The man across the desk, whose name tag read 'Jason Brown' gave him a smile. "My son adores Monroe," he shook his head ruefully. "We've agreed that once he turns five, we'll go to the rescue and find him a feline overlord."

"I started cooking for myself at about five, so I'm sure he'll be able to handle the food, water, and litter box duties," Bob agreed.

"It's the litter box that had us concerned," Jason continued. "Both of us work, and neither of us is looking to take on that particular daily chore," he chuckled. "Still, I'll be sure to help him check Monroe's facebook now that you're back."

"On the professional side of things, do you have anything to declare? Fruits, vegetables, animals, new species of people?"

Bob blinked. "Is that something that's happening?"

"It is," Jason nodded, leaning forward slightly. "Someone from Portugal found a planet with new people on it! They're about three feet tall and look almost completely human, except for their hair and eyes, which have an almost metallic look to them." He paused thoughtfully. "Or maybe gemstone? I don't know, every time I think that it conjures multifaceted eyes, which they don't have, they're normal eyes, just a different color. Anyway, they call themselves Hur'zu, and some of them came back with the Portuguese. So, the thing is that the food they eat has a lot of heavy metals in it, and no one thought to check for that when they were doing cultural exchanges. I mean, if it looks like a green bean, smells like a green bean, and tastes like a green bean, right? It took a few weeks before the guys who brought them back started having issues because they were showing them around and sharing all the meals. So, now we ask," he concluded.

"That's horrible for the guys who got sick but amazing otherwise," Bob smiled. "We found a planet where the people were pretty much bipedal herbivorous dinosaurs."

"Do you have any pictures?" Jason asked eagerly.

"I do," Bob replied, tapping his armband and navigating to one of the directories with pictures of Monroe playing with Laura. He tapped again, and the images started appearing above his armband as a slideshow.

"Awesome," Jason breathed. "Just goes to show you that kids are cute no matter the species," he commented as the image of Laura riding Monroe as the big cat leapt up the steps of a temple appeared. "It looks like they're pre-industrial?"

"Yeah, they're so strong and hardy that they basically just dominated their planet," Bob agreed. "They didn't have much to drive innovation because they didn't need it."

"The Hur'zu are the complete opposite," Jason said. "They've got a steam-punk thing going on, or I guess I should say magi-tech. The reason they came back to Earth with the Portuguese was to learn more about our technology."

"I'd like to meet them, but I'm sure that everyone else on the planet feels the same way," Bob shook his head.

"Pretty much," Jason agreed. "You'd have a better shot than most, you know, you're pretty famous yourself."

Bob shook his head. "I'm sure a lot of that has died down over the past couple of years while I've been away."

"Sure, a bit," Jason nodded. "Anyway, you've been gone for almost two years, do you have anything to declare?"

"Nope," Bob sighed. "We're actually coming back with less than we had when we left. I mean, we have some mana crystals, but other than that, we're empty."

"That sucks," Jason commiserated. "Some of these guys," he pointed out the window towards the ships resting in the nearby lots, "might not be finding a good planet to delve on, but they're bringing home literal tons of rare elements."

"Really?" Bob asked, surprised. "I'd have thought that we'd be summoning anything that we need by now."

Jason shook his head with a chuckle. "Yeah, you would, but the rest of us at tier five aren't summoning palladium and platinum by the ton. The guys bringing that stuff in are only spending a couple of hundred crystals to get to it, so it's more than worth their time."

"Have they found any planets worth colonizing yet?" Bob asked.

"Eh, the independent guys are keeping things pretty close to their vests," Jason replied. "The general feeling is that if they find something good and reported it, they'd then lose out when everyone came crashing down on it. But, the government announced that they've found one," he grinned. "Details are still a little light, but it's tier seven and has a climate almost exactly like Earth! Breathable air, normal temperatures, the works. Because it's a higher tier, they said it would take a year, maybe a year and a half to get all the Dungeons under control, and build up cities around them for people to live in." Jason grimaced. "I'm guessing they didn't want another repeat of the tents on Mars."

"Tents on Mars?" Bob asked.

"Yeah, that happened after you left," Jason shook his head. "A bunch of college-aged kids pooled their resources and built a huge metal capsule, put themselves into stasis with a couple of folks left awake to steer, and launched themselves at Mars. Took them six months, but they made it. They had those collars," he pointed to the one around Bob's neck, "So they could breathe on the surface and not die from radiation, but there were only a couple of hundred of them, and the few people they had who could have used magic to build shelters were busy clearing the Dungeons to keep them from overflowing. Keep in mind, these kids were, like, level ten. So, they ended up using tents. It was kind of funny until the first big dust storm hit, then no one was laughing."

Bob winced.

"Yeah," Jason agreed. "They lost about thirty people, which set them back as far as delving went. They ended up 'landing' the ship on the surface to use as a shelter. Still, they're up there, and they've built a couple of smaller vessels to run back and forth. With the planet only being tier three, they can keep the Dungeons under control with just the people they brought, so there hasn't been any real call to increase how many people are there. As they hit the level cap, they've been coming home and then sending friends and family over to do the same."

"Doesn't sound like it eased the pressure much," Bob said. "Are the queues for getting a delve still crazy?"

Jason made a see-saw motion with his hand. "A lot of people have taken advantage of the King of Thayland's offer, so that's helped, and also as people get to a level they're comfortable with." He shrugged. "I'm level twenty, have to be for the job, and I haven't delved in six or seven months. I just don't need to. My sister still does, she's bought all the way in, you know? She's tier six now, level thirty-eight, I think, and when I talked to her last week, she was complaining that once she'd reached tier six, she could only get in two delves a month."

"Ouch," Bob said sympathetically. He couldn't imagine being restricted to delving twice a month.

"Yeah, she's a little salty about it," Jason laughed. "She really wanted to go to Thayland, but she was premed before the integration, and the government offered her a sweetheart of a deal to get her up to the tier cap as a healer, with the requirement that she work in a hospital for three years afterward, so she's kind of stuck now."

Bob checked his armband.

"Shit, yeah," Jason said, "sorry, I'm a bit of a chatterbox here, let me stamp your forms and get you out of here."

Jason opened the folder he'd had on the desk in front of him and scribbled across several lines on two different pages before stamping a third. "Here we go," Jason handed him the folder as they both stood up. "Have a great day!"

Bob smiled at the gregarious man. "You too."

They had decided not to wait for the portal. It was opened every six hours to move people from the spaceport to San Antonio, which wasn't where they wanted to go anyway. Instead, Bob opened the portal to Dave and Amanda's house.

"Man, it's always surprising to see how much dust accumulates," Dave said, wiping a finger across the gaming table.

"I have both the deep-seated need to start cleaning and the urge to say screw it and get a hotel," Amanda sighed.

"Hotel," Dave said firmly. "We're spending our time cleaning."

"I could get the dust out," Erick offered. "You'd want to make sure you didn't have any loose papers, but I could cast a control air ritual to move all the dust out through a door or a window."

"That would be awesome, and we'll absolutely take you up on that," Amanda said quickly. "While I'm making sure everything is tied down, Dave will find us a hotel and arrange for transport, right babe?"

"Already on it," Dave confirmed, pulling up the screen on his armband. "Wow, that's a scale. Holiday Inn is two crystals a night, while the Hilton is ten."

"We're not short on crystals, at least not for incidental expenses," Jack said. "I lived as a pauper for far too long. Hilton."

Bob shrugged. While rule six remained strong, the truth was that even with the vast reduction in crystal coalescence, he wasn't lacking in them. Yes, he'd gotten rather low during the fourth and fifth Dungeons as he burned massive amounts of crystals to provide the Urlinad with spellcasting staves, but by the end of the fifth, he'd been repaid, and his own delves had started to restore his stockpile. He was currently sitting on almost a million and a half mana crystals, which was a huge number when it came to simple living expenses, but only a moderate amount when it came to the projects he kept being pulled into.

"So," Jessica began, slipping her arm under his, "I propose that we rest up this evening and then make a day of it tomorrow. Shopping, catching up on the news, checking for new cat videos, you know, the normal things people do, yeah? Sort of a lazy day. The day after, we start working on restocking the Freedom."

She looked up at him and smiled. "We should grab dinner tonight."

"We could go to that Denny's you two love," Bob agreed, nodding to Dave and Amanda. "Maybe call Alex and see if he's free, let him catch us up on the latest and greatest for NASA. I'm sure he's eager to pull the data from our armbands."

Jessica shook her head, her expression determined. "I meant you and me," she corrected gently.

"Ah," Bob said awkwardly, looking around the room for someone to help him with the correct response.

Salvation came in the form of Mike.

"You can't do that to him," the former detective said bluntly. "Tell him it's just as friends."

"Fine," Jessica sighed. "Just as friends?"

Bob wasn't sure how exactly her eyes had gotten larger, but it seemed like they had.

"Ok," Bob agreed. "We'll make sure they have something chocolate for dessert and good steaks on the menu."

"I could use some of that," Bailli grumbled. "I don't know how I lived my entire life without chocolate."

"I know," Wayna agreed. "The first time I had a chocolate bar, all that complaining that Amber lady did suddenly made perfect sense."

"So, the Hilton was definitely the right choice," Dave said, rejoining the conversation. "It turns out the Holiday Inn is only prepared to handle people up to tier six, while the Hilton's site indicated they have accommodations for people up to twelve feet tall."

"I wonder if they went for spatial expansion," Bob mused. "It would explain the rates."

"The limo service said that is exactly what they've done," Dave agreed. "Apparently, they have a limo that doubles as a full-size ballroom, complete with twenty-foot ceilings. It'll be less ballroom, more sitting room, for us, but at two hundred crystals for the hour, it's the cheapest transportation I could find unless you want to fly there, and honestly, I'd prefer not to grab that much attention."

"No, I'd like to avoid any necessary attention," Bob said.

"So what you're saying is that I shouldn't upload those Monroe pictures to facebook just yet?" Amanda asked as she walked back into the room.

"Maybe hold off on those for a few days," Jessica suggested.

"Limo will be here in half an hour," Dave reported, tapping his armband to close the screen.

"I've battened down the hatches, why don't we let Erick work that ritual, then we can perch on our tiny furniture while we wait," Amanda suggested.

"Madam President, you wanted to be notified when Mr. Whitman returned," Taylor said.

Elania looked up from her tablet. "Has he started causing any domestic or international incidents yet?"

"No, he followed the International Spaceport Authorities' instructions to the letter, and his ship is currently doing a wonderful impression of an obsidian monolith in the Texan desert," Taylor reported. "According to the customs agent, they had a nice chat, and he declined to wait for a portal to San Antonio."

"Do we know where he is now?" Elania asked.

"No," Taylor shook her head, "but I'd wager an Affinity Crystal that he's in Los Angeles. There aren't many places set up to service tier eight people, would you like me to check and see where he's staying?"

"Or, I could just call him," Elania said, tapping her armband.

"Good afternoon, Bob, and welcome home," Elania said.

Taylor could hear his responses through the speakerphone.

"Good afternoon, Madam President," Bob replied cautiously. "What can I do for you?"

Elania shook her head. "You've done enough for your country, Bob," she chided. "I'm much more interested in the things I'd like you not to do."

"What would you like me to avoid doing?" Bob asked.

"This is my personal number, and if you run into anything that makes you feel compelled to take action, I'd like you to call me first so that I can make sure the issue is addressed. I'd take it as a personal favor if you could do so should you encounter those circumstances outside of our borders as well," Elania said.

"I think I can agree to that," Bob replied. "I'm sure I can work with whomever I need to if it turns out they don't have the juice to get things done."

Taylor smiled in return as she saw Elania grin. "Over the past two years, the world has changed quite a bit, and while you are doubtless still well past us, we've caught up enough that we've been able to fix our own problems. My sincere hope is that you can enjoy yourself as just another person." She paused to laugh. "Or at least as much as a tier eight can, in a world still mostly filled with tier five people."

"Ok," Bob sounded like he was shrugging. "We're staying at the Hilton by the airport if you need us. The rooms are under Dave's name. Thanks for the call, Madam President."

"Thank you, Bob, take care of yourself," Elania said before ending the call. 𝓯𝓇𝘦𝘦𝑤ℯ𝓫𝑛𝓸𝑣𝓮𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓶

"Hopefully, we can head off any disasters ahead of time," Taylor suggested.

"I wouldn't wager on it," Elania sighed. "It's not his fault, not really, but that man is magnet for trouble."