CHAPTER 55: Price Tag – Jessie J

Rannoch really was beautiful when you weren't getting shot at. Of course, there wasn't actually all that much old Quarian architecture left after the Morning War. Most of it had been destroyed by the planet-wide saturation bombing. It made me regret not heading to Rannoch before the war kicked off. It would have been fun to have stories of the peak of pre-diaspora Quarian civilization for Tali.

Nowadays people think of the Quarians as everywhere, but in truth that's the Diaspora at work. Before the Morning War Quarians were incredibly insular. They rarely left Rannoch unless it was absolutely necessary because why would anyone want to have to wear a suit all the time when you could just live suitless and free on your home planet? Sure the pre-diaspora liveships were made to have giant greenhouses of native Quarian flora so you could take your suit off there, but leaving Rannoch was a huge hassle.

On Rannoch the Quarians had created a paradise. All of the unpleasant manual labor and both physical and intellectual drudge work was handled by the Geth for the benefit if the Quarians. They believed themselves to be the greatest and most advanced of the Citadel races, and they weren't shy about letting the rest of us know it.

Petty spite was why the Quarians failed to find help on the Citadel after the Morning War. Both their own and that of the Citadel.

Modern day Quarians are much improved. Humble and practical; capable in ways their ancestors would be horrified at.

No one really liked the pre-diaspora Quarians, and while that hasn't really changed despite a change in underlying reasoning for the dislike, it definitely should.

All of this is to say that Rannoch was a beautiful planet, but if I wanted to see pre-diaspora ruins, most of those structures required an archeological dig to get at.

Something to do after the Reapers, I suppose. Assuming we all survive.

_

All that isn't to say that there were no sites of Historical significance that I could visit. On my second day on Rannoch, Tali brought me to a growing shantytown that she called landfall but everyone else seemed to call Tali.

I asked her about the discrepancy.

'It's the first Quarian settlement on Rannoch in centuries! It deserves a name that reflects that!' Tali explained in a way which implied a Quixotic quest against impossible odds to change the name.

I sympathized. Really, I did! Javik had terrible naming sense and now we were all stuck with the Great Empire of the Enkindlers instead of something cool and memorable like the Krelltopian Empire. I mean, the empire did start on Krelltopia! ... From a certain point of view.

It's not at all misleading to call it the Krelltopian Empire; no matter what Liara says.

Anyway, I sympathized. But not enough to keep from laughing at her.

'Tali's a fine name! They named it after the gifted diplomat who negotiated the end of your Age of Diaspora, I assume?' I asked with a grin.

'Something like that.' Tali muttered irritated.

'Well, nothing you can do once people get an idea in their heads.' I admitted looking at the settlement.

Tali, the town, not the person, was oddly laid out. It looked more like a starport than a home. There were starships everywhere with no thought to spacing or logic. Big ships next to small ships. Giant liveships next to tiny fighter craft. Many of the ships were in active states of being dismantled by teams of Quarians and the occasional Geth, being turned into static structures; arcologies powered by starship sized Eezo reactors.

It was fascinating.

There were street carts distributing food packs. Distributing, not selling. There was even a cart with Levo food packs being operated by one of the suited Asari who occasionally ended up joining the Migrant fleet.

There were gardens too, not the grand sort of parks favored by the Asari and the humans, but industrial greenhouses, made for food production. It seemed like every other structure was a greenhouse.

It makes sense to me. It was as if after a lifetime of living on ships with limited space to grow food and a perennial risk of starvation due to failed logistics, some visionary Quarian decided that now that they had the space, they would never risk going hungry again.

Honestly it felt like they were building up so that they would be able to feed the entire migrant fleet in this one city. Failsafes upon failsafes upon failsafes.

I wonder what whatever power mad urban planner told them to prove this decision. A small part of me hoped that it was 'stick with me, and you will never go hungry again!'

All in all a charming little capital.

'And here we have the media library.' Tali explained pointing out a giant satellite dish.

'Tali, that's a satellite dish.' I pointed out, irked.

'Right! With it we can being and receive any sort of media to and from the migrant fleet and store it in the servers for later retrieval! Now every Quarian can enjoy our knowledge!' Tali gushed.

'There aren't any books.' I stated, factually.

'Of course not! Books are hard to transfer and impossible to read on your suit's heads up display. It's a primitive format only used by old fogeys! This is the future!' Tali grinned.

'This is an abomination.' I replied.

'It's perfect!' Tali denied.

'It can't be a library without books! What's even on the servers? Fleet and Flotilla: special ultra director's cut remastered?' I asked with the maximum amount of sarcasm I could muster.

'Among other versions of Fleet and Flotilla!' Tali replied back completely immune to the crushing weight of my condescension.

'You need books for it to be a library!' I raged.

'Oh! We have e-books too!' Tali smiled.

I died inside just a little.

'E-books aren't books!' I explained, as patiently as I was able.

' They contain all the same data. Now that we have the infrastructure and space for it, there's no need for something as messy as physical media.'

Legion blinked his support.

I regretted ever coming to this unenlightened hellhole of a planet. Reliance on digital media is why the Protheans ended up some mysterious after their temporary extinction! And now the Quarians wanted to make the same mistake!

I had to stop them, at any price.

'How much is land going for?' I asked.

'Why?' Tali asked with undue suspicion.

'I want to build a library branch. A real library. Not whatever knowledge you're calling a library.' I admitted.

'You can't just buy half of Rannoch and turn it into a Library, Krell.' Tali chided me.

'Who said half the planet? I just want a building or two. Something modest. Nothing bigger than one of those old fashioned Human buildings, like the Taj Mahal.'

'Is this some sort of plot?' Tali asked suspiciously.

'Not everything I do is a plot.' I answered, avoiding the question.

This was in fact a plot, but the only aim was to encourage Quarians to read some actual books, so it barely counted.

'That is not the galactic consensus, Nakmor-Professor.' Legion chimed in, unhelpfully.

'All I want to do is build a library to do normal library things!' I protested.

'This area of the city isn't zoned for orbital defenses, Krell.' Tali explained patiently.

'Books! I want to build a library to do book-related normal library things!' I clarified.

'Where are you finding the books? There aren't any books on Rannoch besides the one you sent me.' Tali replied.

Hell, I'm in hell. This is what hell is like.

'I can get books here, Tali. I've written books before. I can write the books and ship them here if I need to.'

'Nakmor-Professor has written a number of books across several subjects and intended age ranges. They are mostly non-fiction with the exception of the very friendly varren, which seems to be a political dissertation disguised as a children's book. Nakmor-Professor could easily fill a building the size of the Taj-Mahal with no more than five copies of each published book and treatise.' Legion explained.

'Really? Huh. It really doesn't seem all that much when you're writing it I guess.' I replied.

I never got into ego surfing, but maybe there were other fun facts about myself I didn't know?

'The land isn't for sale, Krell. The Migrant Fleet is allowing any Quarian to have as much land as they can use and improve. If you want to build a library you can, but you need to actually build it and have someone running it.'

I frowned. Might have to wait until after the Reapers then for that, assuming I was still alive.

That sort of spoiled the rest of the tour for me, sadly, but I had to admit that Tali was a lovely little city.

_

Tali was stuck in Admiralty Board meetings which meant I finally had the time to look up what had happened to Hachiko.

I was immediately hampered by the fact that there was no news of any such Varren named Hachiko on Thessia.

It took me a while to realize that they didn't call her that. It took a while searching for me to find out what they called her, and spit out my lunch all over the floor through my omni-tool screen once I found out.

Apparently, they called her the Varrenoid Typhoon.

I should have named her Vash.

Varren usually live for about five years in the wild, and thirty years in captivity before dying of disease or combat wounds. Varren haven't ever actually been observed to die of old age, but that's more because they inevitably die of other things a lot sooner than that. I'm not a geneticist, I couldn't alter the Varren, but I did want my granddaughter's pet to have a significantly longer lifespan. Thus the exosuit. I was inspired by a combination of Quarian suits and powered armor, I wanted something fast enough that Hachiko wouldn't die from normal Tuchankan predators, like Thresher Maws, with full biological filtering and automated medical care. I built the thing before Humans came around so I didn't have access to Medi-gel, but there were similar substances created just for Varren that were available.

Obviously a good dog would be able to both guard their owner and play with them! And so much of the infrastructure on Thessia was built with biotic-capable beings in mind, like the floating gardens! You couldn't float in them unless you have enough Eezo to use Biotics! So obviously the exosuit had to enable biotic use if I wanted my granddaughter to be able to take her dog out for a walk in the park.

And as for protecting her? Well, with the biotic charge ability she should have been able to flee or harass a thresher maw long enough for Liara and her to escape.

She was loose on Thessia for 50 years.

Apparently it took that long for the the battery in the suit to die.

I looked at the list of disasters linked to Hachiko on the Extranet.

Then I scrolled down.

And scrolled down.

And scrolled down.

For five minutes.

'Huh. Is that why the Asari banned me from visiting Thessia for a while?' I wondered.

What kind of nonsense flimsy materials did the Asari on Thessia build their monuments out of? There's no way that Hachiko could have destroyed anything even the the size of the Statue of Liberty if they'd made it durable in any respect.

Hmmm... Maybe I should have paid more attention to those insurance company updates after all? Apparently they had a pair of Asari following Hachiko around as insurance adjusters. Probably some interesting reports there. And I could have told them the commands to get her to heel. Well, no sense crying over spilled milk. Although... Did this mean that I owed Liara a pet?

Maybe something robotic this time? I did have that Fenris mech I was planning to modify for EDI's spare body... Might be a good idea to give that to Liara as a guard dog once EDI got transferred to her canonical body. Robots don't have to worry about life spans like varren anyway. Probably should adjust the outward appearance of the mech though if I wanted it to serve that function. Make it cute and cuddly, like one of those English bulldogs. I could probably put a particle beam weapon in the mouth too...

Yeah, that was probably the best option. The Great Library of Krell wasn't exactly pet-proofed for biological pets, after all.

_

Author's note: So A lot has happened since I last posted. i got to see Teddy Swims in concert. If you'll recall he's the inspiration for the entire fic's naming so I'm super happy about that! I've also remembered where I put my backlog of chapters. Which is to say my backlog of Chapter. Singular. I have the entire next two arcs planned out and outlined,. but I do need to finish writing them so don't expect the same update speed. Maybe once a week instead?

Anyway, this is back on my writing queue, so expect more chapters.