By late evening, the chaos had settled down, and the students were in their dorms for the first time, with many of their parents waiting hopefully for the call that their precious angels weren't ready to be alone and needed a pickup.
Their hopes were rapidly dashed, though, and the Academy staff were all professionals with a lot of experience getting kids used to new surroundings. They had games set up, social activities, and a party that ran late into the night kept most of the students far too entertained to think of leaving.
Even the less social ones, who were exploring the VR pods and the library full of replicated books, didn't have many complaints.
The fact that there were real books here, made of actual paper, was pure luxury to many of them, and the Shin students particularly loved them. They had immediately decided that paper books were macabre things, like making them out of recombined flesh, but the whole species seemed to have a fascination with "Horror Stories," as they called most things the humans did.
Paper books weren't really a thing in most societies, as the amount of lumber and energy that had to be used to create them was never deemed efficient by their species. That led to many of the new students finding out that a Library was a thing only after they arrived in it during the tour.
Their planets had public data repositories, but that meant computer screens, data tablets, and occasionally historical engraved plates that were arranged somewhat like human books.
"It's like a data article on one specific topic, but it can never be altered or updated. What do you do if the Censors determine that it is outdated data or politically incorrect?" One of the Valkia asked the Librarian, a human member of the Academy staff.
"Then they print a new one and explain that times have changed, and the world is no longer viewed the same way. That's why books are important to Humans. Their unchanging nature means they provide a historical reference that an easily edited digital document can't." She explained.
"Wow, that's hardcore. To think you have heroes from the expansion era without editing their deeds. Even our expansion wasn't so impeccable that we didn't have to edit it." The Valkia sighed before gently rubbing her wing feathers across the paper.
"Here, this one is on the rise of the Cygnus Empire. I think you will find it enlightening. Human heroes make mistakes and sometimes do horrible things in order to ensure the best outcome for their people. We just embrace it. I heard that the Valkia are big on law enforcement careers, and that book is told from the viewpoint of a Commissar in the Cygnus Royal Military, in charge of unit discipline and law enforcement." The Librarian explained, handing the student a thick hardcover book.
The student settled into one of the many comfortable reading chairs with adjustable trays so that heavy books could be held in place without tiring your arms, a necessity when not all of their readers were from species that could support a heavy book long enough to comfortably read it.
They read until nearly midnight, and the Librarian was about to shoo them out to their dorm room, so they didn't miss curfew when an announcement dinged on everyone's watches that the first drones of the Terraforming Network were going live right now and could be viewed from one of the many screens throughout the ship, or from their own holographic projectors since the smartwatches of the Alliance students were generally more advanced than the ones that the humans used, and could create very high-quality videos in any light.
That presented a dilemma for the new students. They were supposed to be in their dorms, but the best video screens were in the common areas of the Academy. They might have come here to learn, but this was the very first day of the terraforming of a new world, and that wasn't something that they would willingly miss. Especially since they had no idea how this human technology that was the talk of the tech news channels back home actually worked.
"Are we ready to start the show? Will it even have a noticeable effect for them to watch, or will they need to rely on the data feed around the drones to tell what's happening?" Max asked Nico as they both sat in the control room of the Development Lab to prepare for the beginning of the mission.
"The air is green and toxic enough that you can see it, like a perpetual fog. The Terraforming Drones will create a clear path to the ground and start cleaning the soil and water below. It will fill in pretty quickly, but there should be a two-hundred-meter clear path under each one.
We have arranged all one hundred currently active drones in a line to begin the operation. They're going to make a couple of laps around the equator before spreading out to begin the grid pattern to reform the planet entirely. It should make for a pretty good show, as they make a pristine path around the world.
The rest of the Drones will be coming online over the next few days. We have a shuttle out getting us another asteroid right now, we just had to delay the acquisition until the traffic jam was cleared since the gravity beam needs a rather large clear space for safety, and we didn't want to hit a yacht with a million-tonne rock." Nico explained.
[Beginning Terraforming in 30 seconds.] Nico's voice announced over the intercom in all of the public areas of the ship.
The bars, restaurants, and lounge areas of the Cruise Ship all fell silent as the crowds waited for the first data streams to start coming in.
[Commander, do we have more biomass reserves? Every single restaurant is running low on material for the replicators.] One of the supply staff asked.
[How about the storage bays in the aft, near the Cutter bays? There should be a load of dried algae there from the early days before we had so many guests. How is the current growth doing?] Max replied quickly before the array activated.
[New growth needs eight more hours since we harvested so much for the surge in visitors. The aft storage isn't logged, so I'll go check. Thanks, boss.]
Just as their conversation ended, the Terraforming array came online, creating a clear path twenty kilometers wide and two hundred meters thick. The sight was amazing like they were erasing millennia of abuse and industry in an instant, and a cheer went up all over the ship.
The array started to move, clearing a continuous path as the toxic gases slowly filled in the air behind them, narrowing the path, but the results that they could see, even before checking the data, were enough to assure them that this was a viable technology, especially after the rest of the drones were brought online over the next few days.
The situation on the ship was only getting crazier as they began to realize that the world really was permanently changing before their eyes. The Terraforming process was usually done out of sight since it was either a proprietary technology or involved a world with some form of life on it, which might lead to protests from activist groups.
Max could sense a few annoyed guests who worked in the industry, upset that they were simply showing exactly what happened in real time, but the overall sentiment was positive, and the guests were looking forward to seeing the rest of the drones start coming online.
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