Unloading

"Please tell me you got this," Priestess Paila warned as she scooped up the hem of her robes and her long furry tail and held them up like a frightened housewife from the 50's.

"I got it, I got it. Priest Beren settled as he aligned the tripod in the center of the dusty room. There was a pulse of energy, a whiff of ozone, and then a blue wall originated on one side of the warehouse. As it passed, dust, cobwebs and Jinzell hives boiled away, leaving only clean polished surfaces behind.

Priestess Paila closed her eyes and stood a little bit higher up on the stepladder as the wave washed over her. Once it had, she checked her mane and all her limbs to make sure they were still there, and sighed in relief when she found them intact.

Beren powered the device down, a satisfied look on his face. "Okay, now you can come in, Dyson."

Gerald walked in holding an armful of cleaning supplies. The squawky chicken Ilrica had given him came wobbling in behind him. "Wow," he whistled, looking around.

"That's how we clean a room here on Central. Beats manual labor any day, doncha' think?"

"Yeah, but now I feel useless," Gerald said, holding up his broom and dustpan.

"Useless? If it wasn't for your girlfriend, we'd never be able to open this second mission in the first place."

"She's not my girlfriend, she's just a classmate."

"Right," Paila snickered as she hopped back down. "Because classmates donate industrial warehouses to the person sitting next to them all the time, right?"

"She didn't donate it to me; she donated it to the mission."

"Happens all the time, right?"

"Sure," Beren laughed. "Just the other day a guy next in line to me at the hypermarket bought me a car. Said he liked the cut of my jawline."

"It is rather striking," Paila complimented.

"Thank you, my sibling," he said, bowing in an overdramatic way.

"Okay, now we just have to pick out the layout we want, right?" Paila asked as she saddled up alongside Beren, her hand nearly touching his.

The floor rose up and reformed itself into a command console. Beren placed his palm on the sensor and it beeped in acknowledgement. A three-dimensional rendition of the warehouse floated up in the air around them, and he began scrolling through different internal arrangements.

"We're lucky, there are a whole bunch of preset designs already setup in here," Beren explained as he pulled out a cable and plugged it into the back of his neck. "Office space, living quarters, large industrial kitchens, all we have to do is select the elements that will most suit us and bring them together."

"It's good that we have such a canny and resourceful priest in our mission," she praised, a little gleam in her eyes.

"Technology is not the enemy," he explained as he began constructing the new mission in the air before them. "We use tools to do our chores faster so that we have time to do other things."

"Yes, like the most important things," she added coyly.

While they worked, Gerald used a hammer and nail to affix a placard to the entryway. His chicken ran this way and that across the floor, chasing something that wasn't there.

Gerald stepped back and looked at the placard. In various languages, it read: 'The Cha'Rolette Ssykes Central Exeter West Mission.' As he looked at it, he recalled the angelic appearance she had during his vision. She was so radiant, so beautiful, but it was more than just physical. She had a beauty of spirit in that moment that he could not stop thinking about.

It was like she was a different person. "Was that the real Cha'Rolette, or just some effect of her powers that made her seem that way?" he mumbled to himself. The more he thought about it, the more his thoughts drifted to her long graceful neck, her rich pouty lips, and her deep sparkling eyes. He wondered what it would feel like to touch that skin, to feel those lips against his...

Gerald smacked himself in the face. "What are you doing? You're a monk, get a grip, man."

"All done here," Beren announced. "Dyson, shoo! Go outside."

Gerald stepped out through the open doors, then watched in amazement as the entire building reformed itself to conform to Beren's design. Walls and partitions rose up from the floor. Light fixtures and air vents grew down from the ceiling. Rows of tables and seats grew up in the main hall, and beyond the trappings for a full-scale industrial kitchen, capable of feeding thousands. The tall, single-story structure cinched itself in the middle, creating a second story with office space, living quarters for the priests and acolytes, and a chapel room to hold the holy relics.

When it was done, every inch of the facility was utilized. Dozens of small semi-permanent rooms filled every nook and cranny of the layout, meant to be temporary dwelling for the homeless, the displaced and the lost; each fitted with simple but private washing facilities, and the ubiquitous links to Central for entertainment.

Gerald applauded as he walked back in. The mission was unfurnished, but ready to go in every other respect. A pantry door slid open and his chicken poked his head out and looked around in utter confusion. The entire process had taken only seconds. "So what's next?" Gerald asked.

Paila leaned back against the marble kitchen island which was now behind her and looked at Beren with a twinkle in her eyes. "Well, we figure since we cleaned the place and set it up, you can bring in the furniture."

Gerald looked back at the seven loading skivs parked outside, full of donated furniture, the Ssykes logo posted all over them. "You're kidding right?"

"No, get started," they said in unison.

Gerald nodded and went outside. His chicken followed, crashing into one side of the doorway, then the other side, then finally making it out. As soon as they were out of sight, Paila tapped the wall control, closing off the doors to the kitchen and locking them. She then pounced on Beren and the two began kissing passionately.

* * *

"What do you want now?" Trahzi asked as the tiny puppy whined and rolled about in its bassinette. The noise it made was grating on her nerves.

The puppy whined even louder. Trahzi reached up and covered her ears. She had been around noises far louder than this. Once her people had even ventured too close to a supernova, which is one of the loudest pressure waves in existence, but somehow this tiny squealing noise was far more discomforting to her than any other noise she had even experienced.

"Please stop making that sound. We do not like it," she said, trying to keep her emotions in check.

She looked over at the robot nursemaid and seriously considered turning it on, but Gerald had made her promise that she would only use it when she couldn't be in her room with the puppy.

Trahzi tried to shove a bottle into the puppy's mouth, but it turned away and spat it out.

Glancing at Gerald's note, she checked the puppy's diaper, and was rewarded with a face full of stench. She looked over at the waste basket, which was filled to the brim with dirty diapers.

"How can one little netsav puppy make this much poop?"