INTERWOVEN ADVENTURES | Circadian Earth: Book 1

Chapter 5

Stardust had settled in somewhat well to her surroundings. In the few hours since she'd connected to her new body, she'd met 2-14, and they'd become an unlikely duo. Stardust seemed to enjoy 2-14's rebelliousness, and 2-14 appreciated having someone to talk to who she didn't immediately despise, although their friendship seemed fragile at best. Meanwhile, Izzy, Citrine and Niko were already thinking about the next prototype.

"How do we deal with the energy issue?"

"Maybe we give her more abilities to use the energy with?" Citrine asked.

"No..." Izzy scribbled the idea down anyway. "I don't like that. But it could be something to do if nothing else works."

Niko chimed in. "Can the excess energy be fed back into the core?"

"Like a loop?"

"Yeah!" Niko rolled around to get the screen on her lower half to face Izzy, before the screen lit up, displaying what Niko was thinking. "Something like this?"

"Now that's an idea I like..." Izzy wrote down some more notes, Citrine nodded in approval.

"Is all this necessary?"

The three of them turned to face the entrance of the workshop. 2-14 was standing there, with Stardust behind her.

Izzy looked at 2-14 with confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Do you absolutely have to continue making prototypes?"

"Of course, how else do we figure out a design for the second Nasric generation?"

2-14 flew up to the table, and stared at Izzy's notes. "Have you considered that maybe we don't need a second generation?"

"Nope, I haven't. But more Nasrics is a good thing."

"It's the year 208. There's over a hundred and fifty million of us, with that number expected to rise by another twenty million by 210. We outnumber everything else in Bitobia ten times over."

Citrine looked at the youngest prototype. "Stardust, can you distract her while we work?"

"Already tried that."

"2-14..." Izzy sighed. "Nobody sees the size of the Nasric population to be a problem."

"No, you're right." 2-14 admitted. "They don't. But did you decide on a format for the second generation serial numbers?"

"We did," Niko answered. "Five letters, five numbers."

2-14 leapt forward and snatched Izzy's pen out of their hand, a feat quite remarkable for someone an eighth of their height. She quickly wrote some calculations on the piece of paper Izzy had been writing on. "That's... no, there's no way that can be right."

Izzy looked at the calculations, verifying them in their head. "No, your calculations match up to ours."

"You cannot seriously be planning to make a trillion Nasrics!"

"Well, the plan is actually for us to never have to worry about running out of serial numbers. I don't think we'll actually make a trillion."

Stardust joined 2-14 on the table. "14... can you just drop it? You're creating needless drama..."

"Oh buzz off, people pleaser."

"Alright, 2-14, that's enough!" Citrine scolded. "We don't need more of your negativity! If you want to be like that, why don't you just do your own thing as you've always been doing?"