Just a little chapter to check in, sorry if you've been waiting.
Otto wasn't used to being a king but he did his best.
He elected Captain J-G and Doctor Feilding as his ministers. Joojoo, it seemed, had elected himself as an advisor. Otto tried to not show the old creature his unease with that.
The boy kept out of the workings of the ship as much as he could, though he constantly suggested they change course for the U.P. ships orbiting Knull. Excuses came from all sides about why they shouldn't/couldn't do that.
He listened, but kept trying.
Tuddrussel was given no job. He had full privileges to lay around and do nothing. It was like shore leave, but without the shore.
He absolutely hated it.
After the first day his back was aching from sitting around. He tried to find something to do, but there was nothing for a future-man to do in such a primitive ship. He dug up maps of the system they were in, trying to find a place where the rogue ships who had stolen Otto could be.
Medicbots followed him, as did two guards.
He tried to see Admiral Elkhart but to no succsess. The Admiral was caught up in the negotiations, the Knulls were trying to weasel out of a promise they had made before.
Elkhart was ready strangle the reptiles, but there was no way 3000 could have rationalized that away. He felt his hair growing greyer.
3000 was locked in an unofficial battle with Larry, the older android in his employ. Larry was the one that had suggested that the Knulls refine the terms of their trading policy with Earth, so that Knull would get a better bargain. 3000 had had to threaten Larry with deprogramming to get that out of him. Larry had told him, cryptically, that Knulls deserved to be traded with as much as the other planets in the U. P., he had a speech about them not being savages and that Earth must set an example.
3000 told him he was being idealistic and illogical.
Larry would have gladly deactivated 3000. The young robot had no concept of other people.
Tuddrussel took solace in Larry's company. The robot was constantly complaining about 3000, but that was fine. Tuddrussel was just glad to see he wasn't the only one feeling Otto's absence. At night when Larry was shut down and plugged into the wall, Tuddrussel would wake up (the way he always had, some time around two or three in the morning) and see the silhouette of Larry by the light of his charging signal. It was a lazy bright blue light that blinked in an out, to prove that Larry was on, if not online. To Tuddrussel, in the darkness of his own worry, it looked like Larry was just managing to breathe, his shadow growing and shrinking as the light passed over him.
Larry, on the other hand, tried to focus on work.
He was sifting through files on Knull peace treaties, trying to break the trap 3000 had set for the Knulls. He pulled up files about Knull treatment after the peace was negotiated. He looked at JPEG's of Knull children, thin and dressed in rags, pulled up the violent histories that had made Knull a militant planet. He pressed the Ambassador's wife to speak up, pressed the Ambassador to push for better terms.
He pushed JPEG's of Otto to the back of his processor, and dialed down the /Saddness his Hart pushed into the rest of him.