Chapter 36: Not a Big Deal
After leaving the cabin in the middle of nowhere... literally in the middle of nowhere... Jun Li and I walked for a few kilometers to an area where Jun Li managed to find a clearing large enough to be able to have the runner hovering over the bushes and small trees on the ground.
The loading ramp located at the back of the runner slowly lowered itself, but it was still maybe a good 8 feet off of the ground. I looked at Jun Li and raised an eyebrow, wondering what he was expecting from me.
On a good day, I might be able to jump like 1 foot off the ground... more than likely less... but 8 feet was definitely not within my capabilities.
Jun Li simply smirked and crouched down low to the ground. Pushing up from his feet, he leaped into the air and grabbed the bottom of the ramp. Hanging from it, only holding on by the fingertips of one hand he turned back around to look at me with a smirk. "See, it’s easy. Try it," he joked as he swung himself up and over the ledge and into the runner.
Making sure that my armor was completely in place, I took a running leap toward the ramp, fully expecting to come up short by more than a few feet. The fact that I sailed up and over the ramp to land on the top of the spacecraft was completely beyond my expectations.
"Now you know why Saalistaja armor is in such high demand," said Jun Li looking up at me with a grin on his face.
Impressed, I looked at the armor in appreciation. I thought, probably like the typical Earthling that had never really believed in extra-terrestrial life forms, that my armor was mostly for defensive purposes. Something like a more modern version of a knight’s armor from the 13th century.
I was surprised and happy when I found out that it had weapons capabilities but being able to jump almost 10 feet into the air with little to no effort was worth every second I spent trying to learn how to use it.
"Are you going to stay on the roof of the runner until we get to the main ship or are you going to get into the cabin so we can take off?" asked Jun Li as he walked up the ramp and into the belly of the runner.
"I can stay on the outside?" I asked confused as I tried to lightly jump down without overshooting my target and landing back on the ground.
"Of course you can. The helmet can ensure that you have the appropriate oxygen levels for you at all times, remember?"
"Yeah, but I didn’t really think that included hanging out on the outside of a ship in the middle of space," I grumbled as I softly landed on the plank and walked into the cabin after Jun Li.
"That suit will be able to keep you alive in any situation until I manage to get to you," said Jun Li as he sat down in the captain’s chair and started to punch a bunch of things into the control panel in front of him. I think he was enjoying being human quite a bit if he was doing things manually. After all, part of Jun Li’s programming was also in the runner and therefore could fly it without any help.
"That’s reassuring to know," I replied with a smile. I remembered him saying that before, but I was thinking that the armor doubled as scuba gear more than a spacesuit. But if it will work in both cases then even better.
"You know I will always come for you, right?" asked Jun Li as he turned to look at me. The runner was on course, I could only assume, for the main ship behind the moon and there shouldn’t be too much for us to worry about right now... except to make sure we don’t run into any airplanes or something like that.
"I know," I answered with a smile as I turned to look at him. And I knew it. He had proved it just now when he hunted me down and tried to rescue me from a killer. The fact that I had saved myself first didn’t take away from the fact that he at least tried.
"What are your plans for the rest of the week?" he asked out loud as we broke through the Earth’s atmosphere.
"Supplies," I said with a shrug of my shoulders. "Furniture, décor, pretty much anything and everything I can think of to make the ship feel like home."
"Sounds good. And I noticed that the people on Earth don’t actually have money, so I have set up a new account for you with a few billion Country M Dollars. That way we run less of a chance of exposure from using an account of an actual person."
"What do you mean we don’t have actual money?" I responded confused because I was more than sure that we had money.
"Your country is more of a digital currency than a physical currency. Everything is done on what you call the ’internet’, but no one actually sees money change hands. To that extent, you don’t actually have money, you just have an exchange of numbers from one account to another. Therefore, I opened an account in an appropriate institution and recorded that there was 5 billion of your Earth money in it," said Jun Li with a shrug of his shoulders.
I thought about what he said, and I couldn’t figure out where he was wrong. I mean, we used plastic cards to buy things and checked our balances online. We were also paid directly into our account, or by check, which meant that we have never really received actual money in terms of bills and coins. We just saw a number going up or down based on what we earned or purchased.
And if you put it that way, it makes you a bit stressed about how much money you have. "Cool," I replied as I nodded my head. If it worked in my favor and Jun Li could just create billions of dollars out of nowhere, then why not take advantage of the system?
I had no plans to return to Earth after this, unless there were no other planets with chocolate, so bending a few rules right now wasn’t that big of a deal.
