It had been so long since I was last at the Lab, that I was having trouble remembering where it was.

  It was either on that moon, inside my ship that I don’t use, or inside my big freaking tower.

  Well I wanted to show off the waste of money ball ship I bought and used a singular time to Layla, so we’d just check there first.

  “What the…” Layla muttered, almost silent as she gaped at the sight before her.

  I Gated us to a large hill on the moon that gave a good view of both the ship, the drone work area, and especially the mountain and cube of rock.

  All the plants on the mountain were long dead, but they weren’t decomposing. Frozen solid as they were, they’d be around until an asteroid or drone got rid of them to get to the ore underneath them.

  Which wouldn’t happen for a very long time, since the mountain was still a very literal mountain.

  “Am I dreaming?” Layla spoke after a good minute of just looking around, pinching herself on the cheek.

  “Nope! Pretty cool huh?” I patted her shoulder and she just nodded.

  The Cabold was lucky enough to be loved by my sister, because if I hadn’t put some basic protection on it before popping over to a moon… The result of such an event would speak for itself.

  The Cabold blabbered on, uncomprehending of the sheer beauty before its dull eyes.

  Funnily enough, the monster in question still preferred to climb onto my shoulders despite its new size. Which made it even more uncomfortable as the larger writhing mass of fur and teeth wrangled around my neck, gripping onto my hair with its claws, and trying to peel my scalp like an orange.

  It could not even yank out a single hair, but by God did it try.

  “Let’s get walking.” I nudged Layla on the back, and she jolted.

  “Right.” She muttered, still taken aback from the sight.

  While you can see the magnificence of the universe in picture perfect clarity thanks to the advancement of technology, there’s just something different about seeing it yourself.

  Actually being there, on the surface of a moon and experiencing it.

  Layla laughed as she hopped around with the lower gravity, since I modified the Rules I manipulated around her to allow her to interact with Gravity properly. I’d have to change it back to safe mode if we go back to a planet, because she’d be crushed otherwise.

  While the spot I chose was quite scenic, it was also a little far from the ship. However, the low gravity allowed us to leap great distances, so it only took 5 minutes or so to get closer.

  “What the hell is that?” Layla asked, and I knew she was talking about the ship.

  “That. Is my ship.” I pointed at the, admittedly ball shaped, ship.

  “Why is it so…”

  “Ball shaped?” I asked, finishing her question.

  “I was going to say spherical, but yeah. Ball shaped.” Layla tilted her head at the nearly perfect sphere, with its little landing gear legs keeping it grounded.

  ‘Damn it. The first person to actually acknowledge its spherical nature and I beef it.’ I sigh internally and move onto more important things.

  “Just how they made it. Come on, let’s board it.” I pushed past the tease potential, hoping Layla wouldn’t pick up on it like a shark does blood in water.

  Thankfully Layla was too preoccupied with the grandeur of literally walking on a moon with no limiting protection, my rules perfectly protecting her from things like radiation and what not.

  The ship was as it always is. Just a suped up luxury orb.

  We passed through the cargo hold, which only held some shelves of Adamantium ingots, but Layla didn’t know enough about rare magic metals to spot them outside of video games or anime.

  “What is that? Steel?” She asked and pointed at one of the bars of the metal.

  “Oh this? It’s nothing important.” I smirked as I grabbed one of the large ingots with my Telekinesis and lowered it in front of us.

  The drones that mine and forge the ingots don’t have any specifications similar to Earths, so it was quite large when compared to Layla.

  “For not being important, you sure do have a lot of it. And it’s pretty too.” Layla touched the metal with her fingers, trailing the edge of the white and goldish marbled metal.

  “Meh, it’s just some Adamantium. We have more than we know what to do with it.” I smiled innocently as my sister just stared at the metal.

  Then up at me.

  Then back at the metal.

  “No way..! Really?!” Layla gasped, suddenly much more interested in the metal.

  I just laughed while she gushed about the metal she’d only seen in media, talking about how warm it was to the touch and the coloring.

  “Can you make me an axe and armor? Please? Pretty please???” Layla began begging for ‘magic gear’, like I knew how to make stuff like that.

  Except…

  Didn’t I know how to do that?

  “I… might be able to make you magic gear? I don’t really remember all of the Skills I used to have before they got merged into one, but I’m pretty sure I had something related to forging.” I rubbed my chin in thought while Layla kneeled in front of me.

  “Oh great Dark Lord Azurath… Your most loyal of servants requests a supremely bad ass Adamantium axe and a gruesome set of platemail.” She spoke with her head bowed, and clasped her hands together.

  “...I suppose I can spare some menial effort for my servant. I am feeling… generous today.” I played along after a sigh, but I was smiling.

  “...I also humbly request a bacon jalapeno cheese burger with large fries, and a large vanilla milk shake.” Layla quickly added on and I sighed.

  “Don’t push it, but fine.” I agreed and flicked her forehead.

  I raised the bar of Adamantium into the air and brought more bars from storage over to us. I also sent an instance of me to her favorite… I think it’s still her favorite place.

  “You still like Grubby’s Burger and Chilli Joint right?” I asked, making sure she still favored the extremely greasy fast food place.

  “Fuck yeah~, I love GB&CJ’s!” My sister rubbed her hands together like a fly while licking her lips and I shook my head.

  “Anyway, what kind of axe design do you want?” I asked while heating up the metal, turning all the bars into a giant orb of molten metal floating in the air above us.

  “I don’t know, your servant said something about it being bad ass.” Layla shrugged.

  “Oh? Well I suppose I’ll just copy some anime or something. What about its Stats or Skills? I bet I could give it some power.” I hummed while manipulating the molten metal into various axe designs.

  Layla would tell me if the design wasn’t to her tastes, and I would change it on the fly. 15 minutes passed and she still couldn’t decide on a design.

  “If you don’t make up your mind, I’m going to make it look like a basic wood chopping axe. Food’s ready.” I Gated our burgers and shakes next to us and held them with Telekinesis, as if there was an invisible table there.

  “I don’t know what to pick! There’s too many options! Also, weren’t we meeting someone?” Layla asked before taking a bite into her ridiculously large greasy mess between two buns.

  “Right, that we were.” I nodded, surprised at how easily we got sidetracked.

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  I created another instance next to me, who would finish making the axe.

  “It’s honestly so cool that you can do that.” Layla spoke with food in her mouth, so I gave her a disgusted look.

  “Thanks, but don’t talk with your mouth full. I still need you to tell me some Skills or something you want the axe to do.” I reminded her, and she swallowed.

  “I have some ideas~. I want my axe to have a cheat like aimbot Skill! Where the blade aims for weak points automatically, and if I throw the axe it can slice through anything! And-!” Layla went on and on about all the ideas she came up with, still talking between mouthfuls of burger and fries.

  The general gist is that she wanted some kind of aimbot Skill, a ‘star wars force’ Skill, a ‘let me cast all magic’ Skill, and some other bs I actually didn’t understand at all so I ignored it.

  “Is this the place?” Layla asked, then took a sip of her milkshake, having finished her burger and fries like a force of nature.

  “Maybe?” I said and opened the door to the Lab on the ship.

  What greeted us was an empty room.

  “Darn. Welp, that leaves one last place to check. You want to keep exploring the ship or head to the Lab?” I took a bite of some fries, eating at a more human pace than my ravenous sister.

  “Let’s keep looking around.” Layla turned away from the boring empty room and immediately started wandering down the hall.

  I had to lean down to get out of the room, since the Cabold added nearly 6 feet to my height.

  But the ship was already made for much taller species, so it wasn’t bad.

  We strutted about, poking our heads into rooms and looking around. It had been so long since I last looked at my own ship, that it was almost new to me too.

  “Woah, nice gamer pad.” Layla whistled and jumped up onto the couch and sinking into the cushions.

  “It would be if there were any comprehensible alien games. Look at this shit.” I scoffed as I turned on the game console thing and it displayed some kind of home screen the likes I have never seen.

  “What is this thing? The GleebGlorb 360?” Layla joked and I chuckled.

  “Close! It’s actually the SeepyFeeky 560.” I joked back and Layla giggled.

  “Let me try it out.” She demanded and I handed her a controller.

  Of which, it had 4 handles, 16 buttons, 4 joysticks, and 8 triggers.

  Layla looked down at it then back at me in sheer bewilderment. I merely shrugged at her confused look.

  “How are you supposed to even play this???” Layla groaned while trying to wrap her hands around the controller in any meaningful capacity.

  I tried not to smile, since I was just messing with her.

  What I gave her was not really the standard controller, but a really shitty after market controller I got to play some sort of alien mech game.

  I never got it to work, but it was money worth spent now that Layla couldn’t figure out how to even hold the damn thing.

  Layla glared at me after I couldn’t hold back a laugh and I handed her a real controller.

  It was much more reasonable, and it was pretty similar to something you’d find as one of those generic all purpose controllers for computers or mobile gaming.

  Now that Layla could actually hold the controller, she loaded up one of the games I had called Lithoriacoes Journey.

  “What… am I even looking at?” Layla muttered as she tried playing her first alien video game.

  “See what I mean? As far as I can tell, it’s like a 4d platformer but with 5d combat. I never got past the first level.” I smiled as Layla squinted at the large tv as the mere action of moving one joystick made the display collapse into a cascade of vibrant colors and mirroring geometry.

  “Good lord. Is this what it’s like to jam a spoon into someone's brain and stir it?” Layla joked and I chuckled.

  “It very well might be.” I agreed and she tossed the controller to the side while rubbing her eyes.

  “It actually hurts to look at that. Let’s do something else.” Layla got up and walked away from the lounge and I turned everything back off.

  I showed off the captain's quarters and she looked at me in sadness.

  “This is the captain's quarters? It’s so… empty. And lifeless.” Layla waved her hand at the room.

  “Well I don’t live in it anymore. Besides, look at how luxurious it is!” I gestured to the bed and the fancy lighting but she just shook her head.

  “The entire ship is luxurious. That makes this room mediocre, at best.” She shook her head in disdain at my previous living situation.

  “What’s wrong with simplicity? Why’s everyone got a problem with that?” I sighed and closed the door, continuing our little tour of the ship.

  “Now this~! This is something I can get behind.” Layla cracked her knuckles and sat in the captain's chair. Trailing her fingers along the console and its many, many buttons.

  “Yeah, I like the control room too.” I offered and she scoffed.

  “No, the style still sucks. It practically screams that whoever designed it has more money than they know what to do with.” She mimicked pressing buttons, making beeping noises with each ‘press’.

  “Well, your assessment isn’t entirely wrong.” I muttered while rubbing the back of my head.

  I did have way too much money, and I did kinda just go for the most expensive options for no reason. Though I did like how it looks.

  “Alright, I’m done here. Let’s go meet this woman.” Layla hopped off the massive chair, and I Gated us back to my building.

  “Oh this place is better. Whoever lives here must have some sense, unlike you.” She teased and I rolled my eyes.

  “This is my suite.” I raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh. Well it sucks. Let’s go, I’m tired of looking around at boring rooms~.” Layla grabbed my arm and dragged me towards the door.

  We meandered through the halls, and it didn’t take long to find the active Lab.

  The original use I had made the Lab for was to identify items. I ran out of items a year ago, so I’ve been outsourcing the Sally’s as a small research firm.

  Which means they don’t really do much anymore besides watch the Parabox that I forgot about.

  “So? Who's the lucky lady?” Layla asked then looked around the room full of equipment and drones slightly taller than her.

  Layla just gaped at Sally-1 as she wheeled up to us, her camera swiveling to look at Layla in the eye.

  “Eh-, uh… What?” Layla stammered, slightly taken aback.

  While she had seen some of the drones from afar, I bet she never thought she’d see one with a fully conscious and sapient AI.

  “Layla, this is my employee Sally-1! Sally-1, this is my sister Layla!” I introduced them and Sally-1 shook her camera.

  “Y-yeah, hello?” Layla greeted Sally-1 back, but it sounded more like a question.

  “Sally-1 is a fully sapient AI, capable of feeling emotions and individual thought!” I gave her a smile, and Sally-1 made a sort of whirring noise.

  Layla thought for a moment, tapping her chin.

  “How did you become like this? If it’s no trouble to ask.” She asked and both Sally-1 and I gestured to the Parabox sitting on a table not too far away.

  Layla glanced at it, confused, then blinked. The Parabox was now 4 times larger than it was mere milliseconds ago.

  “Huh?!” Layla nearly gasped and I chuckled.

  “That is an anomalous cube of unknown origin, capable of doing paradoxical things randomly when observed by anything sapient.” I put some real effort into my words to sound wise and all knowing, like the ‘experts’ on the history channel.

  “Paradoxical? Like it contradicts itself?” Layla asked, tilting her head. The Parabox tilted as well, clipping into the table like it wasn’t there.

  “Oh no. What did you name it?” Layla groaned and I felt offended that my naming sense was so highly disliked.

  “It is called… The Parabox~!” I dramatically revealed its glorious name and my sister just looked at me funny.

  “You named it with a pun? Are you serious?” She gave me an accusatory stink eye.

  “Oh come on! It’s a good name for this! It’s a box, it's paradoxical, it’s a freaking Parabox!” I defended myself, because this hill was worth dying on.

  “Yeah, fair enough. I like it.” Layla gave me a smile and nodded in approval.

  I grumbled as I turned away to pout from the two women fucking with me.

  They were teasing me before, but now they were just straight up gaslighting me! The nerve, I swear.

  At least they were getting along.

  “So how did it affect you to the point you gained sapience? Did you just touch it funny or…?” Layla asked Sally-1.

  “I can’t even imagine it.” Layla stared at the Parabox, clearly itching to touch it or poke it with a stick.

  “It won’t hurt you if you pick it up. At least, it hasn’t hurt me or anyone else so far…” I rubbed my chin, trying to remember if it harmed me in any way.

  “Alright~.” Layla didn’t need anymore convincing before walking right up to the normal sized Parabox, and promptly grabbed it.

  Layla completely vanished and I could not feel her presence anymore.

  “Mom is going to end me.” I muttered.