Chương 1042: Day One Thousand And Forty

Dear Diary, There are definitely moments where I'm really not sure how to feel about where we've wound up. By 'we', I'm sort of talking about my ever growing nuclear family, which is clearly some kind of bizarre isotope by now. I don't remember much from chemistry, but the whole 'two protons, two neutrons' was Helium, and that kinda paralleled the 'two parents, two kids' that was the expected family size back in the nuclear era of the Boomers. Okay, I think it was.

That's what old shows showed, and classic television wouldn't lie to me, I'm just sure of it. By that idea, even if you assume the protons are the 'adults' rather than the 'parents', that's still only six of us counting Conrad. There's like three kids per adult, too, which is just not any kind of stable atom I remember. At any rate, I'm only sort of talking about that. I'm mostly talking about Saffron and I. The Imperator and her Goddess.

I'd really like to think that people have seen enough of the benefits and learned enough of the costs and required maintenance that if we both kicked off tomorrow, the whole thing would keep rolling forward, but I'm not quite that much of an optimist. Somebody, probably somebody named either Lancaster or Orange, would wind up in charge of the whole thing, and I'm not sure either of them really have the visceral feel, need, and drive to promote Agency that my Kitten does.

Okay, honestly, I think she's torn on that one too. She's an old school control freak, really. Type A personality all the way. Even when she takes some time off to relax, there's always a sense that she's, like, got some kind of 'relaxation goal' she's looking to meet. Probably to enhance her ability to do her thing when she heads back to work. Really I'm not sure she's quite that 'productivity motivated', but she's definitely 'work hard, play hard'.

At any rate, we've wound up as the de facto leadership of what amounts to the first Mortal world power that isn't just, I dunno, a bully who walks in, takes what they want, busts shit up, then sails home to huddle in their hovels. I mean, I really have no idea what the Cities in Europa look like, but to hear the folks in Phileo and New Amsterdam tell it, Phileo is the bleeding edge of technology and progress, with New Amsterdam being the cutting edge that's never far from the bleeding.

Lest anyone forget, when I got here that meant 'street lamps' and 'indoor toilets, septic tank edition'. Honestly I'm not sure about whether they've gone with municipal sewers or septic tanks here and now. Shit, I'm not sure which is happening here at the Homestead. But two years ago she and I were... Okay, two and a half years ago, she and I were just two Cadets attending Phileo City Heroic Academy.

Yeah, she was a promising academic, and I was a talented shitkicker, but I don't think anybody, even our respective mentors, really understood how much Change we were bringing to the table. Weird, and I know I'm kinda rambling now, but I remember thinking, worrying even, about Changing a world that wasn't really my own. I've read all kinds of isekai stories about somebody, frequently but not always a dude of insufficient melanin, who finds themselves in a primitive world and proceeds to 'improve' everything.

Even in worlds where there's magic all over the place, not unlike here and now, they wind up recreating the shit from back in the day. Usually some particular thing that they think of as 'critical to modern life'. Most often that's some kinda modern weapons, but sometimes it's technology. Infrequently it's social changes, but even there I don't remember too many where they're advocating for radical equality.

Usually they wind up 'king' or something, occasionally they're the power behind the throne, puppetting the actual monarch. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. I have yet to do that thing where I manage to fit my entire hand into Saffron, whereas the reverse is nowhere near true, so I'm gonna say if puppetting has happened, it's the other way around. But my point here is that I know I'm an outsider.

I know there are all kinds of subtle bits of culture I know I'm missing, so I'm not gonna be pushing to recreate the world I came from. Yeah, if something is a health, welfare, or safety issue, something that could be solved like infant mortality, I'll point that out, but I'm gonna let folks from here and now make the decisions on how. Eh. I'll give them a general direction, hand them the power to make Changes, and let them know what's possible. That sounds fair.

I mean yeah, I'll do whatever work I can do, too, but I'm not gonna force feed them shit I'm not too sure on myself. Anywho, after the false alarm yesterday, I had Siobhan give us all a crash course in how to spot Braxton Hicks contractions, or what she called 'false labor', using the granular Assessment data. Got dragged out of bed by Saffron, expected another Bedroom visit, wound up a little surprised when we stepped to the Academy suite.

"What's up, Kitten?" She sighed.

"I can't sleep. Would you mind awfully?" She nodded at her chair. I settled in, patted my thighs, and she sat down and pulled up her coding windows.

"Whatcha working on?"

"An update for Assess Health." I chuckled.

"Worried about our Darling?" She shrugged.

"That's what's keeping me up, and I'll definitely be updating it to distinguish between false and true labor, but I've been intending to update Assess Health to make it fully compatible with the System Spell for a while now."

"How much will that take?" She'd already started moving her code windows around. I realized as I watched through her eyes that the screens of 'code' were more mathematical formulae, specifically the kinds of things the kids did to make their 'math art', than what I thought of as computer code. Then again, I wasn't that kind of geek back in the day, so for all I knew that's what went into actual computer coding.

"Not nearly as much as any of my previous projects. It's nearly there already, since the version that Darling Shaped was designed to be integrated eventually." I hugged her.

"You mean you designed it that way." I felt the heat of her blush as she kept working.

"Yes, but that seems inordinately prideful." I gently took hold of her wrists, and she went still.

"Be proud, my Wife. Be proud, my love. Be proud, my Goof, because you absolutely deserve it."

"Need I not fear hubris?" I shrugged.

"Eh. If you get too arrogant I'll just have to bring out the bindings and my flogger." She chuckled as I let her get back to coding.

"That is not a consequence likely to stop me from being arrogant."

"Oh no. Anyway. I'll let you get to it." She kept at it all night, as I did my massage chair thing. At dawn she Co-Located to the Grand Council chambers as well as to the Temple, where I joined her to teach math. Kinda funny, she had a couple of the kids who'd just finished learning Variable Equations, which meant they were ready to start learning Mor-Mimic Calculations. Of course, before she did that Co-Location, she requested and got a pick me up Stabilized delivered much like drug mules take their cocaine.

Wouldn't be my first choice, but she looked so cute and bedraggled after a night spent coding that I couldn't help but do exactly as she requested. Watching her eyes literally light up as I did so was just a bonus prize. I also had one of me back with Siobhan all day today. She, Hailee, and I spent the day in the water closet. Not because she was retching, thankfully. Hailee kept that at bay.

Unfortunately, she decided she needed to stay hydrated to avoid another bout of false labor, which meant she was drinking a shit pot of water, which given Siobean had taken up residence on her bladder meant that she had to piss like every fifteen minutes. She still wound up having some minor ones after leftover bisque lunch. Marie's cooking is tasty as fuck, but I suspect it might be a little high in sodium or something.

If somebody told me three years ago I'd think a day spent teaching math, playing booster seat, and watching my Wife's baby mama piss was a warm and fuzzy day, I'd have thought they were mental. Probably would have been pretty copacetic about watching Saffron Domme it up in Glowing Midnight though.