Earth: Starting Notes
Copyright© 2026 by Flubu
Chapter 7: What Comes Home
Neris woke because the room was wrong. For several seconds she lay very still. The ceiling was too high. The ventilation was too quiet. The mattress supported her differently.
There was no engine vibration beneath the floor, winter wind against farmhouse glass or Aster Vale systems humming beyond the wall.
Her body assembled possibilities faster than her mind did, offering four at once: ship, farmhouse, med bay or transit.
She opened her eyes properly. Jaydee’s painted cup sat on the bedside table, with Daniel’s chipped mug beside it and the maple carving between them. Home. Neris exhaled. Her tail, which had gone rigid beneath the blanket, relaxed. The room came back in pieces: old shelves, a faint mark on one wall where a school display had once hung, the window facing the side garden and her training-era model courier vessel, still missing one stabilizer because Lysa had broken it when she was nine and spent the next twenty years denying responsibility.
Neris smiled when she smelled breakfast. Her mother had apparently decided survival required immediate feeding. She dressed without thinking and reached for Daniel’s mug on the way out. Only halfway down the stairs did she realize she was carrying it. Jaydee noticed before anyone else. She was already at the kitchen table, eating with concentrated seriousness, and her gaze moved from the chipped mug in Neris’s paw to Neris herself.
“You brought that one down.”
Neris looked at the mug. “I did.”
“The Earth one.”
“So I have two favourite cups now?”
Jaydee considered that, then nodded. “Yes.”
Ormaz sat at the table reading three documents at once. He glanced at the mug and pronounced the accumulation of possessions a concerning development without looking up again.
“You own seventeen jackets,” Neris said.
“Functional categories.”
“Four of them are identical.”
“Different weights.”
Linnea crossed behind Neris with a pan. “Do not encourage him.”
“I was correcting him.”
“You were engaging.”
Ormaz turned a page. “Is conversation prohibited before breakfast?”
“For you, perhaps.”
Neris smiled. She had missed this. Kaden stood near a cabinet with a small tool in one paw, examining a drawer rail.
“What broke?” she asked.
“The rail.”
Teral, already seated, said, “It squeaked.”
Neris looked from the drawer to Kaden. “You fixed a squeak before breakfast?”
Kaden shrugged. “Could get worse.”
Neris laughed. Daniel would like him. That thought arrived automatically, followed by another: Daniel would sit there—not at this exact place, but at this table. Ormaz would interrogate him about farm machinery while pretending not to. Linnea would feed him until he became defensive. Lysa would ask invasive questions disguised as normal ones. Jaydee would demand proof that Canadian cows were real. Teral would watch everything.
Kaden would probably find something Daniel had repaired and inspect it professionally. Neris could see it too easily. That was new. Linnea put a plate in front of her, and Neris looked down at it before meeting her mother’s eyes.
“Mom.”
“Eat.”
“I have not complained.”
“You were going to.”
“I was going to say thank you.”
“No, you weren’t.”
Neris sat. Jaydee moved her chair six centimetres closer. Neris took a bite and stopped. Linnea looked at her immediately.
“What?”
Neris swallowed. “Nothing.”
“You stopped.”
“It tastes exactly the same.”
Linnea’s expression softened.
“Of course it does.”
Neris looked down at the plate again. That was somehow worse. Everything was trying to be familiar, and her body kept catching on it. She reached for the weather display built into the kitchen wall and checked the temperature, wind and precipitation before realizing what she was doing.
Lysa noticed. “You checked the weather. You’ve never checked the weather before breakfast.”
“I’m a pilot.”
“You check orbital forecasts.”
“That is weather.”
“No, that is pilot weather.”
Neris looked at the display. Surface conditions. Nothing remarkable. Lysa’s eyes twinkled with poorly suppressed teasing: “Why did you check?”
Neris thought of Daniel at the kitchen window with coffee and snow outside, wondering whether the tractor would start, whether the lane needed clearing, whether cattle waterers would freeze and whether they had three hours before the storm or six.
“I don’t know.”
Lysa smiled. “You do things differently now.”
Neris lifted Daniel’s mug. “I did many things badly before.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“I know.”
For a moment, the kitchen quieted around her as everyone noticed the same thing. Neris looked at her family. “I’m still me.”
Linnea put more food on her plate. “No one said you weren’t.”
Ormaz turned a page. “You were gone long enough to acquire habits.”
Jaydee said: “And two favourite cups.”
Neris smiled. “Yes.”
That was enough. Kaden left for work after breakfast and returned forty minutes later. Neris looked at him as he came through the door.
“That was fast.”
“I did not go.”
“You just said you were going to work.”
“I was.”
He held up his terminal. “Work arrived first.”
The newsroom had asked him to join a live panel on Earth entirely because everybody knew he was married to Neris Vael’s sister. Neris stared at the request.
“That seems efficient.”
“It is unethical.”
“Those are not opposites.”
Kaden smiled once. “No.”
He had declined the panel and accepted a different assignment on public reaction to the Earth contact. His conditions were clear: no family sourcing, no profile of Neris, no private Daniel material, and no quoting Jaydee simply because she happened to say something interesting over breakfast. Jaydee, listening from the table, looked disappointed.
“What if I say something very interesting?”
“Especially then.”
Neris looked at him. “So what do people here think?”
Kaden leaned against the counter. “Which people?”
“That is annoyingly unclear.”
“It is also the right question.”
He had spent the morning reading public feeds. Some people were delighted. Some were frightened by a civilization with nuclear weapons and no planetary government. Some wanted human music immediately. Some wanted the Ministry to stop building infrastructure toward Earth until humans could explain what they intended to do with dimensional transit if they ever learned it. Some medical groups were already asking whether assistance could be offered responsibly.
Some commentators had begun describing Earth as technologically young. Kaden disliked that framing.
“Why?” Neris asked.
“Because it treats Earth as though it is simply an earlier version of us.” He turned his terminal in one paw. “The histories and institutions are different. So are the strengths and the mistakes. Reducing all of that to one technology scale tells you very little.”
Ormaz looked over from his documents. “Use that.”
Kaden sighed. “Please stop editing my work.”
“Then stop saying publishable things in my kitchen.”
Neris smiled. This was what she had wanted: not a Ministry summary or a poll, but someone whose job was to listen to what people were saying and ask what they meant underneath it. Kaden looked at her.
“One more thing.”
“What?”
“When journalists ask what humans are like, most of them are not actually asking about humans.”
Neris waited.
“They are asking whether we should be afraid.”
Her tail moved once. “And what do you tell them?”
“That one courier living with one farmer does not answer that question.”
Neris nodded.
Daniel’s federal security summary arrived at six forty-eight. He did not know why federal security summaries needed to arrive before sunrise. Possibly Canada assumed farmers were the only people awake. He sat at the kitchen table in socks and a sweatshirt, drinking coffee while the secure device displayed:
MEDIA INTEREST: HIGH
TRESPASS ATTEMPTS: 0
UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLE APPROACHES: 4
UNAUTHORIZED DRONE OPERATIONS: 2
Daniel stared while Marcel came in through the mudroom.
“Morning.”
Daniel turned the display toward him. “Four people tried to find the farm.”
Marcel removed his coat and studied the screen. “Only four?”
Daniel stared at him. Marcel went to the coffee.
“Town’s doing good.”
“Two drones.”
“Ed said one guy tried launching one behind the curling club.”
Daniel blinked.
“What?”
“Couldn’t get signal.”
“Why do you know this?”
“People talk.”
“That’s the problem.”
“No. Outsiders talk. People here listen.”
Daniel rubbed his face. Marcel poured coffee.
“Anybody get close?”
“Not yet.”
Marcel nodded and went back to his coffee.
Daniel read further. The local authorities had rerouted two media vehicles after drivers stopped repeatedly near private properties. One had been warned after attempting to use an unmaintained seasonal road. Daniel frowned.
“Did Edith send someone north again?”
Marcel drank.
“Don’t know.”
“Marcel.”
“Roads are confusing.”
“There are signs.”
“Sometimes signs are wrong.”
Daniel looked toward him. Marcel studied the coffee. Daniel sighed. Outside, the farm looked ordinary. That was becoming suspicious. Somewhere beyond the tree line, somebody was almost certainly sitting in a vehicle with a radio. Someone else was watching traffic. The protection existed without placing itself in Daniel’s yard. He could tolerate that. Mostly. His phone lit. Claire. Daniel answered.
“You awake?”
“You called.”
“So yes.”
“Why are you like this in the morning?”
“Genetics. Your problem too.”
Daniel smiled.
“What?”
“Have you seen the overnight coverage?”
“Not yet.”
“Keep it that way until you finish breakfast.”
Daniel set down his mug. “What happened?”
“People discovered the phrase alien nanotechnology.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
“Of course.”
“And the phrase became medical miracle in approximately six minutes.”
“Mara is going to kill somebody.”
“She sent me three messages containing punctuation I did not know doctors used.”
Daniel looked at the federal device.
“Canada wants another interview.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“They called me too.”
“Why?”
“Because apparently being your sister now qualifies me as a stakeholder.”
Daniel’s mouth tightened.
“Did you tell them no?”
“I told them I am not discussing you without you. Then I told them their proposed interview format was terrible.”
Daniel smiled. “That sounds like you.”
Claire continued.
“They’re worried about misinformation around the nanites.”
Daniel looked toward the monitor on the counter.
The monitor was small, quiet and green.
“Yeah.”
“Somebody online is claiming you’ve stopped aging. Another person says the nanites are contagious.”
“I’m not. They’re not.”
“I know.”
“Another says they cure cancer.”
Daniel stopped at that one. His hand tightened around the mug, memory moving immediately to Emily. Claire heard the change in his breathing.
“Daniel.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s why Mara thinks you may need to say something.”
He looked down. He did not owe the world his medical records, but he knew what desperation did to people. If sick families started chasing promises the nanites could not support, privacy was no longer the only thing at stake.
“I’ll talk to Mara. Written, not television, and only about what we actually know.”
Claire’s voice softened. “That sounds right.”
Daniel exhaled. Marcel sat across from him.
“What?”
Daniel covered the phone. “Someone online has decided I’m immortal.”
Marcel nodded.
“Helpful.”
“Why?”
“Winter chores.”
Daniel stared. Claire said through the phone: “I heard that.”
Marcel leaned toward it. “Morning, Claire.”
“Morning, Marcel.”
Daniel scowled at the phone. “Everyone is unbearable.”
Claire said: “Consistent, at least.”
Neris’s family wanted to see Earth, which in practice meant they wanted to see Daniel. Jaydee asked first.
“Do you have pictures?”
Neris looked at her. “Of what?”
“Daniel.”
Lysa said: “Yes.”
Teral looked at Lysa.
“You could let her answer.”
“I am reinforcing the question.”
Neris sat in the family room with Daniel’s mug still in one paw. Breakfast had ended thirty minutes earlier. Linnea was cleaning despite repeated offers of help. Ormaz had moved from three briefings to five. Kaden had found another household problem nobody had identified. Neris looked at Jaydee.
“I have pictures.”
“Show us.”
Neris hesitated because photographs felt different now. Earth still had no image of her because she had refused one, and Daniel had refused to describe her. Privacy had to work both ways. She opened her personal archive. The images she had from the farm were not many. She selected those Daniel knew existed and had knowingly shared or posed for. The first showed him outside the farmhouse in early snow.
He wore a coat and hat, with one hand raised in protest because Neris had taken the picture while he was explaining something about the generator. Jaydee leaned in.
“That’s Daniel?”
“Yes.”
“He looks normal.”
Neris stared. “What did you expect?”
Jaydee shrugged. “Someone more alien.”
Lysa laughed. Teral said: “From his perspective, you are.”
“That is what I said yesterday.”
Jaydee looked at the picture again. “He’s tall.”
“Relative to me, yes.”
“By a lot?”
“Not really.”
“Can I see the cows?”
Neris blinked. “Daniel is still on the screen.”
“I saw him. Now cows.”
Neris gave up and moved to the next image. Mabel. Jaydee gasped.
“There.”
Neris smiled.
“That is Mabel.”
“Is she the violent one?”
“Yes.”
Ormaz looked over. “Violent cow?”
“Daniel exaggerates.”
ER’s voice came from the room system. “He does not.”
Everyone looked toward the speaker. Neris frowned.
“Were you listening?”
“I am part of this conversation.”
“You were silent.”
“I did not have anything to add.”
Ormaz looked toward the speaker. “Rare?”
ER paused. “Daniel has corrupted you.”
“I’ve never met him.”
“His influence is evident.”
Jaydee pointed at Mabel.
“Does she bite?” Jaydee asked.
“No, but she kicks. Daniel has learned that repeatedly.”
Neris changed images. Marcel appeared holding a length of pipe while looking irritated at ER through an open Takuhai access panel.
Jaydee’s ears tipped forward. “Who is that?”
“Marcel.”
“The secret one?”
Neris looked at her. “The what?”
“Daniel didn’t tell the government.”
Neris closed her eyes. “No. Marcel is not secret.”
“Why not tell them?”
“Because Marcel’s life is Marcel’s.”
Lysa leaned closer to the image. “Why does he look angry?”
ER answered. “He was incorrect.”
Neris said: “You told him the fitting was metric after he spent twenty minutes looking for the correct imperial adapter, and you knew the whole time.”
“He remained incorrect,” ER said.
Ormaz said: “I like Marcel too.”
ER made a sound that was not quite a sigh. Neris moved back to Daniel. Linnea entered from the kitchen and took in the scene.
“What’s this?”
“Daniel,” Jaydee said.
Linnea came closer and studied the photograph longer than the others had. Neris noticed.
“What?”
Linnea glanced at her. “Nothing.”
“Mom.”
Linnea looked at the image again. “He looks tired.”
Neris’s tail stopped moving. The photograph had been taken before Daniel’s accident. Before the worst of the resonator work. Before the goodbye, but after months of grief had begun changing shape.
“He was.”
Linnea looked at Neris. “Is he now?”
“Sometimes.”
“Better?”
Neris thought of Daniel laughing again, cooking, walking farther, finishing the carving and standing in the snow at the end.
“Yes.”
Linnea nodded.
“Good.”
Linnea asked nothing else. Jaydee waited exactly long enough for the quiet to settle before saying, “Show another cow.”
ER had to return the maintenance platform at thirteen twelve, a distinction he disliked even though it was accurate. Ressa Tor stood in Aster Vale’s repair bay beside the orange chassis while ER’s voice came from Takuhai’s internal speakers.
Ressa needed the chassis for an external coolant inspection that would take somewhere between five and seven hours. ER objected to the imprecision, then to the duration, and finally to the inconvenience despite knowing perfectly well that the platform belonged to Aster Vale and had been built for maintenance.
“You have had it for thirty-nine hours,” Ressa said.
“Intermittently.”
“And now we need it for the work it was designed to do.”
ER had no technical objection left. “I understand the argument.”
Ressa waited. ER released control. The platform stood empty. ER still had the bay through Takuhai’s cameras and sensors, but the viewpoint he had occupied a moment earlier was gone, and the absence irritated him more than expected. Ressa disconnected the local interface. A second technician rolled the platform away. The vest had already been removed and hung on a nearby equipment rack. ER watched through bay cameras. He could still see everything.
Technically he had more perception without the platform: dozens of sensors covering multiple angles, along with thermal and pressure readings, structural data and audio. He had never lacked perception. The bay had simply become farther away. Ressa looked toward one of the cameras. “You miss it.”
“The conclusion is unsupported.”
“You answered quickly.”
ER declined to continue the discussion. Ressa returned to a diagnostic console. Minutes passed. Technicians moved through the bay. ER tracked all of them. He could have spoken to any one. He did not. The orange vest hung beside the work rack. Ressa looked at it, then toward the camera again.
Ressa let his denial pass until ER opened one design database after another. Dedicated mobile extensions existed; ER had never needed one before. Within minutes he was rejecting options that mimicked biology unnecessarily, looked industrial without an industrial purpose, borrowed military visual language or added limbs he did not want. What survived the first cut was less about appearance than range, latency, battery endurance, touch feedback, sensory fidelity, failure isolation, continuity and safe local control if link quality degraded.
“You could just say you want one,” Ressa said.
“I am reviewing available technologies.”
Ressa watched the active query for another minute. “Do you want me to ask engineering whether a custom civilian platform is feasible?”
ER considered the question longer than he wanted her to notice. “Not yet.”
Ressa smiled. “That is different from no.”
“Language permits temporal qualification.”
ER closed two databases and opened another.
Canada’s request reached Daniel through Beaulieu instead of appearing directly on the secure device, as he had asked. He sat in Mara’s examination room while she reviewed the latest monitor data. “Still green. Inflammatory markers trending down. Nanite activity stable.”
“Good.”
Mara looked at him as she removed a sensor from his finger.
“Pain?”
“Three.”
“Truth?”
“Four.”
“Better.”
Daniel pulled his sleeve down. Beaulieu’s voice came from the speaker on Mara’s desk.
“We would like you to consider a controlled public medical interview.”
Daniel refused before Beaulieu finished the sentence. Mara suggested a written format instead, and this time Daniel looked at her.
“You two coordinated.”
“No,” Mara said. “We independently reached the obvious conclusion.”
Beaulieu accepted the written question-and-answer format without argument.
“Public speculation is accelerating.”
“I know.”
“Some claims are potentially dangerous.”
Daniel’s jaw tightened. Mara sat opposite him. Beaulieu continued.
“We have seen claims that the technology is infectious, transmissible, commercially reproducible, capable of reversing aging, capable of curing multiple illnesses—”
Daniel said:
“Stop.”
Beaulieu stopped. Daniel looked down. Mara waited. He thought of Emily in a different hospital, a different year and a different kind of waiting. What would he have clicked if someone had promised something impossible? What would he have paid? What would he have believed? Mara said quietly: “You don’t owe anyone your records.”
“I know.”
“But you can say what we don’t know.”
Daniel nodded.
Mara continued. “And what we do.”
He looked at her.
Daniel set the boundaries before they went any farther: no miracle language, no claims about who else the nanites might have saved, no speculation about cancer, and no samples. Mara agreed with the medical limits and added that any later research request could be refused separately.
Daniel looked at the speaker.
“Marc?”
“Yes.”
Daniel wanted the questions in writing first and Mara involved in every medical answer.
“Edits,” Mara corrected. “I am not approving your answers like you work for me. I’ll check medical accuracy.”
Daniel accepted the distinction. He also excluded questions about Neris’s biology, ER’s technical systems and any medical photographs. Beaulieu agreed to all three.
Daniel leaned back.
“And stop calling it alien nanotechnology in headlines you can control.”
Beaulieu paused. “We do not control headlines.”
“Government material.”
“That is reasonable.”
“Xianglume medical nanotechnology.” Mara nodded.
Beaulieu said: “I’ll pass it on.”
Daniel looked at Mara. “What if they ask whether it saved my life?”
“It did.”
“What if they ask whether it could save someone else?”
“We don’t know.”
“What if they ask whether it could have saved Emily?”
Mara’s face changed. Daniel held her gaze. She answered without softening it. “We don’t know.”
He swallowed and nodded. It hurt, but he did not ask Mara to make the answer kinder.
The second request for Neris’s image came while she was helping Jaydee reorganize something that did not need reorganizing. Jaydee had dragged her into a small workroom off the back of the family house. School projects occupied one wall. Music equipment occupied another. Three boxes were labelled in Teral’s handwriting. One had been relabelled by Jaydee:
IMPORTANT
Below, in smaller letters:
ACTUALLY IMPORTANT
Neris held up a piece of painted board. “What is this?”
“School.”
“That explains nothing.”
“It was structural design.”
“Kaden helped?”
“No.”
Neris looked at the join. “Kaden helped.”
“A little.”
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