“The god doesn’t eat bug-bugs, just collects them. I heard from the breeder that you’re really special. Apparently you have many students?”

“I’m a poet. I currently teach Classic literature to the livestock humans on the feedlot.” Yi Yi struggled to pronounce “poet” and “literature,” rarely used words in the Devourer language.

“Boring, useless knowledge. Your breeder turns a blind eye to your classes because their spiritual effects improve the bug-bugs’ meat quality…. From what I’ve observed, you think highly of yourself and give little notice to others. They must be very interesting traits for a head of livestock to have.”

“All poets are like this!” Yi Yi stood tall in the pocket. Even though he knew that Bigtooth couldn’t see, he raised his head proudly.

“Did your ancestors participate in the Earth Defense War?”

Yi Yi shook his head. “My ancestors from that era were also poets.”

“The most useless kind of bug-bug. Your kind was already rare on Earth back then.”

“They lived in the world of their innermost selves, untouched by changes to the outside world.”

“Shameless … ha, we’re almost there.”

Hearing this, Yi Yi stuck his head out of the pocket. Through the huge window port, he could see the two white, glowing objects ahead of the ship: a square and a sphere, floating in space. When the spaceship reached the level of the square, the latter briefly disappeared against the backdrop of the stars, revealing that it had virtually zero thickness. The perfect sphere hovered directly above the plane. Both shone with soft, white light, so evenly distributed that no features could be distinguished on their surfaces. They looked like objects taken from a computer database, two concise yet abstract concepts in a disorderly universe.

“Where’s the god?” Yi Yi asked.

“He’s the two geometric objects, of course. Gods like to keep it nice and simple.”

As they approached, Yi Yi saw that the plane was the size of a soccer field. The spaceship descended upon the plane thruster side down, but the flames left no marks on the surface, as if the plane were nothing but an illusion. Yet Yi Yi felt gravity, and the jarring sensation when the spaceship touched down proved that the plane was real.