Dead Star Dockyards 271 The Question of a Name

Two days had passed since the announcent, which had been t with great fanfare by all except Donovan, who understandably needed to keep an eye on the Pegasus. A small party had even been thrown on her behalf, one sowhat limited by the lack of people. To that end, she had been assured that those on the escorting vessels were also throwing so form of celebration as well.

Petunia did not feel moved by those displays of joy, though. As much as she appreciated them, they did not instill any great emotion in her. A far more powerful emotive force now resided in her tummy, one that dominated her every thought.

She had a baby, the final gift bestowed upon her by the one she loved. Petunia could not afford to lose him, not after so much trauma and depression surrounding the loss of his father. The death of this child would certainly be the end of her as well, not even Titanyana would be enough of a motivation to keep going. Because of this, Petunia realized she needed to do everything in her power to safeguard him.

Fortunately, Petunia was not alone in this endeavor. Diana, for all her peculiarities, displayed an extre level of interest in the unborn child, offering all sorts of advice and urging her to avoid stress.

"What, if I may ask, is the purpose of this contraption?"

"Contraption?" Diana frowned at the tool in Petunia's hand. "I don't know."

"Really?"

"Hey, I can't rember everything. Though . . . I think I might have an idea. Hand it here." Diana snatched the thing from Petunia's outstretched hand and inspected it before placing it on top of a potato, the tuber being completely covered by the thin tal casing around the edges.

POW

Petunia flinched at the sudden show of force, completely oblivious as to why Diana would hit it so hard.

"Hm. Sharper than I expected. I believe it's called an instant chopper, popular in the 2000's if I rember correctly." Diana lifted the instant chopper to reveal the potato had been sliced remarkably evenly. "I probably asked Arc to make one because I thought it looked cool. I think it'll be useful for food preparation though, won't it?"

"I imagine so . . . are we going to be using that potato for sothing?" Petunia frowned at the potato, still unskinned. Diana seed to have picked up at random, because potatoes were not on the nu for the night.

"I'll, uh, I'll make sothing with it. Maybe a few chips for Donovan." They had been sliced a bit thick for potato chips, another recipe the air fryer was used for, though it wasn't like they couldn't be cut thinner. "Anyways, have you co up with a na yet?"

"Pardon?"

"For the baby. I hear it's a struggle to think of a good one."

"Oh? Oh, no, I haven't. It is usually the father that provides the na . . ." Petunia's ears flattened. ". . . or the grandparents . . ." Her shoulders slumped.

". . . I suppose you should get to thinking then." Diana's expression denoted her understanding of the landmine she inadvertently stepped upon.

"I suppose I should."

- - - - -

"-and it was super cool! I didn't think that anything could move like that!!! How did they do it?"

"Well, it was a cartoon, kinda." Cayzi, Kayes, and Titanyana were accompanying Donovan in the cockpit, making small-talk about so of the movies and television shows Diana had been subjecting them to while Arc worked on developing the language translation model. They had managed to give Arc a firm understanding of the language and alphabet with regards to their equivalents in English, however he would need a great many examples of conversational and textual usage to solidify all of the rules inherent in it and catch exceptions.

"Wow. Your people must have been amazing artists. I can't imagine how difficult it would have been to draw every fra with such detail by hand! I swear, I could have counted the individual hairs on their bodies."

"That's, hmm, not quite right?" Diana had exposed those present to a movie called 'Zootopia' under the pretext of familiarizing them with the animals of earth. Why she had chosen to go the route of an animated and highly stylized film instead of a docuntary befuddled him. Arc claid that she chose so because it was an interesting movie for children with a plot that didn't really require too much understanding to enjoy, but he wasn't buying it. "I think it would be more accurate to say that the movie was made with dolls . . . kinda. Look, I don't know that much about digital animation, all I know is that it wasn't hand drawn."

"It wasn't?" Kayes, fortunately or otherwise, expressed a level of interest Donovan had not expected of him. "But they hardly looked like dolls."

"Like I said, they weren't dolls, but they were kind of like dolls. How do I explain this?" Donovan found himself grasping at straws. "Do you rember that combat simulation?"

"How could I forget?"

"Well, they made those dolls and the set they were on in a similar manner to how that combat simulation was made, and then manipulated them like you would a marionette or whatever in order to make the movie."

"So . . . I don't even know what to think of that." Kayes seed to be drawing a blank, as did Cayzi. Titanyana's expression signified she understood though, even if she couldn't explain it herself.

"Regardless, I'm glad you enjoyed the movie. If Arc is to be believed, then we should have the translation model complete enough for him to redub the movies in your language. It's probably gonna look silly because the lips won't match the words and the accents won't translate or whatever, but it should be better than having to divert your attention with subtitles."

"Truly?!" Cayzi appeared ecstatic at the news. "Will you really!?"

"Yes." Arc spoke from the ceiling, splitting the room's audio in such a manner that both parties could understand. Donovan didn't really get how this 'doublespeak' worked, sothing about adjusting the outputs to cancel out one language output at certain points, but it clearly wasn't perfect. "I will not claim that the translation will be perfect, however you should be able to understand the general premise of what is being said. I think you will also find that the general quality of the movies on display will increase a level. Diana plans to start you on so of what she considers to be the best movies of all ti."

"What has she been showing us up to this point then?" Kayes smirked as he responded. In no way could this be mistaken as sothing other than a playful jab.

"The movies on display thus far have been good, true, but no better than that." Arc responded seriously, likely not entirely confident in his assessnt of intent. "They were better than diocre, but fail to reach the realm of great or excellent. The movie trilogy you will watch tomorrow are considered to be masterpieces, adapted from an equally magnificent book."

"Oh? I suppose you'll have to translate it for us to read."

"Perhaps that is sothing that can be arranged."

"What is this story called?" Titanyana spoke to Arc, confident in her ability to ask the question correctly. "Will I be able to read it?"

"It is called 'The Lord of the Rings'. The book was written by John Ronald Reuel Tolkein and published in three parts. I believe that the prose within will be beyond your grasp for so ti, however it should be good reading material once you have a mastery of the language."

"That's quite a long na. Was he a noble by any chance?" Kayes had taken an interest, for better or worse.

"No, though he was born of higher status than most."

- - - - -

Petunia stared at the ceiling of her room as she contemplated the question of a na, a task she had not thought she would ever be delegated. Custom, as far as she could recall, had the na fall to the male with the greatest degree of seniority in the family failing a living father. Barring that, the eldest woman in the family would be give the task, however she could not determine if the mother was to be included in that.

This was a huge concern for her because she was older than the only living relative of the baby, Titanyana, who happened to be a Strapper. At the sa ti, Titanyana expressed a reluctance to participate in the process. Both of them could claim authority, yet both renounced it. Petunia wished she had the wisdom or blessing of an elder to rely on, assuming they had an idea of what to do about this situation in the first place.

The Strappers and the Nekh as a whole did an excellent job of ensuring that there was only a single line of succession to avoid a struggle for what little power the position of monarch could be said to hold. Naturally with the waning birth rates it wasn't entirely impossible for Strapper siblings to both produce children in a desperate bid to ensure the continuation of the line, however that implied that at least one of them would be alive to assu the task of naming the other's child should one pass in the interim. What little she could rember of these cases did not involve all but a mber of the sa generation of the baby being present to na it, as by that ti the succession would have been secured and attempts at reproduction would usually cease on the sibling's end.

What a ss this was turning out to be . . . though she supposed it was insignificant in the face of their larger problems. What good was there in stressing about a na when the lives of millions rested on the line?

"Petunia?" The doors, despite being made of tal, were thin enough to hold a conversation through.

"Yes, milady?"

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Petunia didn't think it was a lie. Nothing about her condition suggested a problem, aside from her frustrations about the na. "I just don't know what to do."

"May I co in?"

"Of course." Petunia would never refuse a request from Titanyana, even if she found it unpleasant. "Is there a problem?"

"Nothing that you should worry yourself with." The Queen closed the door behind her with care so as to not disturb the silence. "You've enough on your plate as is."

"I . . . do I now?" Petunia continued to lie still on her bed as Titanyana crawled onto it, exhausted from a day that didn't warrant the feeling. "Even if I do, I'd like to take my mind off of it for the mont. If it isn't too much trouble, might I ask what you are struggling with?"

"I'm learning more and more about their history right now, and I can't help but think about what we could end up doing with them because of it." Titanyana did not orient herself alongside Petunia as one normally would in bed, instead curling up in the mid-section so as to place her head adjacent to Petunia's stomach. She was trying to get as close to the baby as possible without disturbing or disrupting it, terrified that she might sohow harm him if she touched Petunia's skin. Instead she relied upon sight and sound to observe, her tail slowly swaying behind her out of intrigue and joy.

This side of Titanyana was uncharacteristically childlike in Petunia's eyes, wholly unbefitting of a Queen but entirely expected of a young woman who had never been this close to a pregnant woman before. There was also the emotional aspect of this child being her last bit of family, a cousin that would replace the father and uncle she had so unceremoniously lost.

"If it is of no consequence, would you mind telling more?" Petunia truly had nothing else to do at the mont.

"Arc has begun to teach about colonialism and the technological revolutions."

"I apologize, but I don't know what those an. Could you elaborate?"

"Not really. I'm only just learning about them myself, so I don't know anything beyond the basics." Titanyana closed her eyes, taking a deep breath as she did so. "What I was told reminds of a few conversations we've had in the past though, the contents of which I don't think I fully grasped until these lessons started."

"Oh?"

"Sothing Diana talked to about a while ago was population, and how easy it was to make it grow. She said that with the amount of food that a single person could grow using their technology, it would be incredibly easy to support a rapid spike in population."

"How rapid?"

"I don't rember, and I don't think she was too certain of the numbers herself, but I can't imagine it would be too difficult for us to bring our numbers into the tens of billions within a century. I don't think the won would want to birth the number of children necessary for that to occur though, not if childbirth is as painful and stressful as I've heard it to be."

"How would that be possible?" Petunia did not doubt Titanyana's assertion, she was just genuinely curious.

"I did so math as an experint and checked with Arc, though I admit I made more than just a few assumptions. I assud we only saved ten million people of around twenty years of age, and that each couple would have ten children in their lifeti. It's not perfect, but it ans that the size of our population should increase by a factor of five every twenty years or so. In one generation we would reach 50 million, in two we would have 250 million. After three there would be one and a quarter billion, then six and a quarter billion, and on the fifth generation there would be so 31 billion."

"So . . . sowhere between 80 and 100 years from now?"

"Mhm, but that also ans that we will reach the limits of what the planet can support in just as quick a ti." Titanyana's eyes flicked open, a modicum of ambition appearing within. "Which brings to the other thing I ntioned, colonialism. Once we reach that level, or even before it, there will be a need for us to expand to satisfy the needs of the people. We could go to war, but that would an conquering places with people already there. Instead of that, we could end up doing what we are doing now."

"And what might that be?"

"Developing an uninhabited planet - colonizing. It might be a resource-heavy investnt, but Donovan has made it clear that colonial developnt won't be as difficult in the future, that it would be profitable, even."

"Hmm. An interesting thought. Should it co to pass, we may find ourselves with many hos instead of just one."

"Right?" Petunia's Queen seed pleased that she understood her excitent. "But with that, I think we will need more Strappers."

"Will you not be enough?"

"I don't think I could handle the managent of multiple planets, even with the help of the Terrans. I think it would be a better idea to have my kin represent the hos of my people in my stead."

"Then we had best hope you have many children!" Petunia stroked the head of her . . . niece? She wouldn't do this normally considering the difference in status, but Titanyana clearly didn't want to be treated like a queen in the mont.

"About that . . ." Titanyana made eye contact with Petunia, ashad. "I don't think my children will be Strappers."

"What do you an?"

"Well, Donovan isn't a Nekh, and I don't know what characteristics our children will inherit. I think they will end up being more like Strausses instead."

"Then . . . how will the Strapper line-" Petunia's words outpaced her thoughts. "Do you an . . ?"

"I think I want him to inherit the duties of the Strapper line instead of my children."

"But, but, but my lady!"

"Don't worry! I won't abandon my duties. I will serve as the Monarch of the Nekh until I die, I won't abandon my duty."