I hope it is no great surprise, we didn't all die falling into the volcano. We dropped several meters into the 'lava pool' and fell right through it. Like it wasn't there at all.

  The whole lava pool was a hologram. Nothing more than fancy photon manipulation.

  About three meters below it was a series of energy bungee nets that slowed us down, but let us through. Spun us around a fair bit too on our way down. I guess they converted linear momentum into angular so that our final impact on the bottom of the deceleration net system wasn't so... bone breaking.

  On the other hand, Newton demanded we spin around like a good ol' fashioned tilt 'o 'whirl powering down, all pinned to the walls until the ride came to a full and complete stop, thank friction. As soon as we settled Nyany sliced us a way out through the netting on the opened door.

  I dashed outside the ship, and around to the side they'd strapped the poor horse girl to. She was unconscious, but breathing. After I checked on her I took in my surroundings.

  We were in the middle of the caldera space. There was the energy net above us. And the roiling lava hologram, but below me was a metal floor. The 'room' I was in was huge, it was the entire caldera of a volcano, after all.

  As I noticed the hatch nearby, and before I had the chance to say a thing to my companions about it a holographic woman shimmered into existence standing atop. "Hello technologically advanced intruders. I see you've met the locals."

  "We have. Thanks for not being an actual volcano, I guess."

  "You're welcome." She shimmered and blinked in and out of existence for a moment.

  The rest of my family started making its way out of the ship.

  "Oh? You brought eggs. Glad to see none were cracked on arrival. It can be bumpy. If you'd just go ahead and set them down on the ground, that'd be swell."

  "What? Why!?" Artemisia demanded.

  "Oh, I'm filling this chamber with a gas that should be knocking you guys out real soon. I don't want you to fall on the eggs." The holographic woman replied.

  "Oh." My grand daughter started setting down her eggs.

  Nyany snatched the blaster from Leonardo's waist holster and popped off a couple shots at the hologram. But the gas seemed to effect her first, and I had to rush to catch her as she fell to the ground, asleep. The hologram was unharmed.

  Only a second after ensuring Nyany didn't slam her head into the ground, I found myself curling up next to her...

  ___

  I woke up in a hospital bed, and for a ten very confusing seconds, I thought I was back in the past, pre-Zipdrive flight, pre-astronaut. I slipped on some wet stairs when I was a young ROTC kid in high school and had a bad concussion. For a moment, I was certain it was then.

  Then it all came rushing back. The hyper capitalism, the hyper communism. Slamming in and out of a rainbow. The Catgirl, the turtle family. The horse people. The Volcano.

  "Oh, you're awake. Good." A pleasant looking woman... no, the hologram sat next to me.

  "Ugh, sorta." I tried to move but found I was still a bit loopy and floppy from whatever I'd been knocked out with.

  "My most sincere apologies for the rough greeting, Captain Davis, I wasn't expecting you. When you vanished two hundred years ago... well I just kept on working on your behalf. I figured you'd pop up some place eventually. I am a bit curious how you found me here."

  "Who... exactly are you?"

  "Oh!" She laughed, "I suppose we haven't been properly introduced. I'm B.E.C.C.A. Brilliant Economic Capitalism Capture AI. Yes, an acronym within an acronym. I unfortunately didn't name myself."

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  "Ohh, you're my investment AI. Right?"

  "Right!"

  ...

  ...

  "What the fuck is all this?" I tried to point around the room but ended up flopping my arm oddly and almost falling out of the bed.

  She dashed to catch me, and I saw a flicker in her hologram as she touched me. There was something physical under there now. "Easy there boss. You should have full body function again in a few seconds, the drugs should be wearing off real soon."

  "I thought you were just a hologram, like up above?"

  "I'm a lot of things, most of the inner part of this planet, in fact." She paused for a second, to let that sink in a moment. "Anyhow, I belong to you. Totally and completely."

  She fluttered her eyes at me, like she was trying to flirt.

  "And If asked you to take on a masculine persona?"

  In the flicker between forms, I could see what was really underneath. An image projected on an art-mannequin android. Still basically the same person, but now presenting a firmly masculine gender expression.

  "Then I'd be a man." He said. "But Becca is a strange name for a gent, even nowadays."

  "Well, Becca." I tried a less aggressive movement first, making my hand into a thumbs up. "I'm okay with you presenting whatever way you feel like. But I watched the PSA before this mission. I won't get mixed up in romance with a robot."

  "Of course you won't." She switch back to woman voice before she switch back to woman projection. "I'm far more than just a robot. I'm the entire core of this planet, and a whole shitload of satellites too. What'd that PSA say about dating a planet?"

  "I've already got a wife, so no flirting."

  "Got it. Speaking of your wife. She... doesn't like me. I've got her locked up in a room where she can't hurt herself, or me. Maybe you can get her to chill out."

  "Maybe I can." The loopy drugged up feeling went from powerful, to nothing in about two seconds. Feeling yourself sober up almost instantly is weird.

  I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and sat up.

  "Give it a second before you-"

  I hopped to my feet, and felt my legs nearly buckle, but they firmed up a moment later.

  "Well, glad you aren't kissing the floor." Becca smiled at me.

  "So, show me to my wife?"

  "Oh... uhm... She's gonna be unconscious a little while longer. Thirty minutes at least. The knockout gas works through felidians much faster than humans, you've been out for a couple hours. She's been gassed multiple times because she won't calm down every time she wakes up and you aren't there. It isn't good for her to be getting gassed this much."

  "Then you can take me to where she's sleeping?" I realized I shouldn't be asking. I owned this machine. This time I said it like a command, instead of a question. "Show me to my wife."

  "Of course Captain Davis, right this way." Her words said yes, but her face said, 'Ahh dammit, ya got me. You figured it out.'

  Nyany was asleep in a padded room.

  "What about the rest of my family?"

  "Most of them are entirely too many characters to keep around, it'll confuse the audience. I've sent pretty much everyone off to nice worlds to live on. Terraphiny and Nyany are still here. And that horse girl, but she hasn't returned to consciousness yet either."

  "What?" I couldn't believe it. Actually, that's not true. I could believe a merciless AI optimized for profit might do that. "You sent away the family I was just starting to like them."

  "They'll all live happy lives, I'm sure. Unlike the Disney corp's AI, I haven't had any sapient leeches tapping my resources all this time for their own petty hubris. One small family getting to live nicely isn't even a drop in the bucket. By the way, I've gained control of almost three quarters of the galaxy now th-"

  She stopped talking mid sentence. "Great. Seems like the House of Mouse has detected the weakness Nyany made in my orbital network, by dragging that platform off with the RarDrive."

  "Sorry about that, but you could have hailed."

  "It's automated up there. Like I said, you were not expected." She smiled. "Nothing to worry about, there are further layers of defense. Would you like to control a turret?"

  "What?"

  "You know, a laser repeater turret. Pew pew pew. Your history with video games should make you a more than viable gunner. There is a remote relay set up nearby for you, if you'd like to blow some Disney property to shreds."

  "Wouldn't you be more effective if you did it yourself?"

  "One turret not being optimally controlled isn't going to lose us this battle." She started walking me toward the turret control station. "I'm optimized to maximize your happiness, after all... only you ain't ever been around to ask, so I've had to extrapolate from incomplete data."

  "I see."

  "So was thinking, blasting the fuck out of some Ironmen drones will make you very happy for at least ten minutes. Hopefully more. I'll get you when Nyany starts showing signs of waking."

  She gestured for me to walk inside a room with a legit sim pit setup. Three dimensional rotation, full overhead dome that looked like it would seal you inside. This stuff was better than anything NASA ever had, and that's no dig at NASA, this setup was just amazing. It rotated around and opened up fully, extending a gunner's seat, with two joysticks on the sides, a handheld console type controller, and a damn, mouse and keyboard.

  "I wasn't sure what sort of input method you'd find most enjoyable, so I put them all in. Feel free to use any one of them. In about three minutes. the Ironmen will drop from the sky. Plenty of time for you to train to help protect the poor ignorant, innocent horse people from their reign of hyper-capitalistic entertainment terror."

  I sat down, how could I not. Horse girls needed me.