Omega sighed heavily. Honestly the world not making sense was starting to get a familiar groove to it.

“Okay, so let me see if I can explain what all of that. You know you really should have SAID something earlier if it was going over your head like that Quarti”

The prophet who was simultaneously eldest and youngest of the three of them gave a wide innocent eyed grin and shrugged helplessly. Omega huffed and went back to going over the instruments on hand. Pressure was a bit different from most recipes but no worse then a difference in elevation back on Terra.

Would have to avoid the whip creams but she already knew that. So far it was well within the range for the bubbles to form as they baked. She had made a few tiny dishes of various blends, mixes and recipes from deep in her skill share. Mulled over the chemistries and physics.

But all of that was useless if she did not have ovens that worked properly.

“Okay going over it again, The first few bits was kind of just for show, you got that right? Pretty much just poking at how we simple little terrans are short lived and ephemeral nothings. The meat of it didn't start until we got to when you... well when everyone died that time you told us about”

Quarti huffed and folded her torso over backwards until she could kiss the floor. “I reckoned that ya blue-belle! Toddles I’m not. Story and song been me and mine since afore your kin ever set foot upon terra. They showed ya pretty pictures of the big mothas but I saw them by my own soul and was borne of em twice like”

Omega shook her head. And checked one of the other prototypes, the temperature from the heating was uneven, even with the circulation fans? She prodded and held her hand over it from a few different angles until she felt the slight chill in the aura of oppressive heat. There was a leak!

That was going to be frustrating to fix. She took a few notes down then cut the power to that one.

“Well what are you not getting then Quarti? Just follow the pattern and it would work fine! I mean come on Aleph could follow it fine.”

Quarti slumped right side up like a splashing wave of water. Her expression flat and she spoke, tone thick like Omega remembered her great grandmother’s once was.

“Aleph is a fresh souled genius who speaks numbers at a behemoth girl! I am a stale and mangled scroll of tales and ghosts from before time held together with stubborness, spite and atrocities! You are a pretender who learned to make more of the souls you steal then they realize they have lost. Not one among three are we the same!”

Omega scowled at Quarti and shivered as she let the momentary frisson pass without shaking loose the souls that provided her skill share.

She turned her eyes back to the next prototype and sniffed. The temperature was still too hot, and she was sure this one would have worked? She sighed, at least nothing was unsalvageable. She could strip the parts back down and either rebuild one of the life support’s heaters or make another attempt with a different arrangement.

Surprisingly no one among the colonists had ever designed an oven before. She had plenty of maintenance folk who knew how to tune and tweak when one broke. She had a dozen experts who were used to blithely having the fruits of civilization to ply their craft with. But there was no genius appliance engineer among the lot of them!

Over all it meant her head and soul was full of critique for how crude the effort was and very little advice on how to make it better. She was mostly working from first principles up on this batch, trying to kitbash with mechanics and maintenance had ruined some currently irreplaceable components.

“Okay, so you are grimy and old and different. That just makes this more confusing Quarti. You’ve lived and breathed and known lives longer then Me or Aleph. Did you never learn any arithmetic or scholars notation before?”

Quarti huffed and rolled forward and back from her feet to her ass. Staring up at the sky.

“I learned and forgot, learned and forgot. Did Nae tie into the story, did nae tie into the soul. Lost over and over and over again did I. Ways to count, ways to know. Know the shape of them, the feel of having them in my hands and now always slipping through fingers. Not so often was I Priestess or Noble. Mostly of common or strange folk. A Treasure for others was I born often as not. Kept in a box recall? That was the best way for a long time. Not found any better since to keep the soul clean. Lose less that way but gain less too”

Omega grunted and as she inspected one of the ‘prototypes’ this one was solid, even temperature. Good circulation. It would probably work, she sussed in her head with the song of experts and engineers that the heat circulation should scale up. But she was using the engineering for train slip streams to try and bash together a proper flow for a convection oven.

“Well why can’t you just do what I do Quarti? I mean really? I’ve always wondered, but I was a bit too overwhelmed by you being you to ask before. But if it’s such a problem why not just do a skill share?”

Quarti was standing, face right next to her, lips pulled back an eyes fixed right on her own. Omega did not jump, the look in Quarti’s eyes made her freeze. Pupils much too wide, lips peeled back in a way that if you were half blind you could imagine was a grin. But Aleph had seen that in feral beasts and crazed mad women.

“The reason little blue is I can’t borrow... Lost the soul for it... All I can do is steal and devour... And that is not fair or right to sup pon the spirits of my childer is it? Not fer a scant half a life of knowledge”

She rolled back into a happy little young woman instead of the ancient and hungry thing that had been staring back at Omega from behind her eyes.

“So if you t’would explain the mumbling bungle box’s numbers in proper years and dates I’d much appreciate it like”

Omega sighed and moved over to doll up a tray of sample cakes of various mixes, grains, flavorings. Then slip the small tray into the miniature convection oven design candidate.

“Okay. So I’m not riding the math hounds right now but by my reckoning it went something like this.”

“About Seven thousand years ago for the ‘mother cows’ you saw, Ten thousand or thereabouts for your humanity dying out on terra. Um About Three Hundred Thousand years for when Terra Became fully habitable for uh... Human Civilization?”

She scrubbed at pans and washed them as Quarti followed her with her eyes, but apparently did not seem inclined to help with anything. She raised a brow at the prophetess.

“I’m Gonna take a double shift watching the dead souls for ya so you can tinker awake and out of it ya grobler gung”

Omega raised a brow, she was almost certain that was actual nonsense instead of a clever reference. But ya never could be certain with Quarti.

“Fine, So About three million years ago was when Terra was borne”

They both paused to contemplate the vision of that, whether the alien knew it or not the experience of actually seeing that moment had touched Omega so deeply. She could feel similar from even Quarti. She could not say why, it was somehow even more uplifting and enthralling then the weird attraction towards the ‘mother cows’. A sight only ever imagined by Terrans.

She put the pan on the rack to dry then moved over to dismantle one of the prototype ovens that had managed to cool down enough to handle.

“About um, three hundred million years ago a whole lot of stuff happened, Elsie called it the sophontic extinction or something. I kind of got the impression it was pretty serious news. Apparently between that and Terra being born humanity showed up and started living on them. Or something.”

Quarti swayed a little bit on her feet shifting weight from one to another as Omega worked screws loose and carefully disconnected copper for proper salvage and refitting. Even the insulating panels could be repurposed if needed.

“Um I think about Five or Seven Hundred million years ago things like animals and trees and plants and well, everything first showed up in the reef. There was something about spirit type life having evidence of working with DNA so I guess they have it corroborated from multiple sources? Fossils and Genetic something or other testing.”

One Oven down, and now she needed to take the sample tray out of the oven, while she was looking Quarti handed her over the fire retardant smothering blanket cut out she had improvised and stitched into a pan holder.

“Ah thanks Quarti, Hmmm Don’t those smell good!”

There was a non-committal nod and chirp of agreement so she sighed and set the tray of various cake samples to cool.

“Right after that it goes um, About three billion years ago? Uh I forget exactly what I was getting a little overwhelmed but I think that’s... Oh yeah sorry that’s actually when the evidence of LIFE uh with dna and spirits and things first occurred? Maybe a bit older than that?”

Omega blew on the cakes and then poked them with a thermometer.

“Hmm yeah these will be ready to taste in a bit... So uh right? Um I think something like a hundred billion years ago was how far back Elsie said people found evidence of something like star deposits? Something to do with the oldest Reef structure I didn't really follow that well. “

She pried one of the cakes out of the tray and frowned. The ‘Vitalloy’ in this one had much better heat distribution properties than regular flour. It had heated the whole cake too fast and started to burn it.

She took a bite anyway.

“Um... Uh I think after that the last bit before I had to bail or I was gonna wet myself was uh... Something like a Thousand Billion years? Three? I really could not pay attention after that point my eyeballs were floating.”

Quarti huffed and shrugged.

“Fine then, Scroggler wench. Good enough for me!”

And then with that she was off to the meditation pod mumbling about stifling and showing the youngsters how to make a proper bath.

Omega chewed her metallic sweet hardtack biscuits. This was not going to work for cake, but it was alright as a snack. She would need to use a lower temp probably. It was very tempting to dip into the supply of ‘butter’ Pylo had provided to add that extra fatty delight.

But Omega was not quite ready to put more of that into her mouth then necessary.