Setting the Deadline, the Next Planet and Hidden Secrets

I separated the food into two portions, and when I confirmed Sazzy wasn't looking, I sprinkled some powder into her dish. Then, I waited for her to be done using her personal terminal to come over and eat. It was long past the time to talk about the terms and conditions of me being transported into this world. Namely, I needed to confirm how long I have to wait before my brother is revived into this world.

Waiting for Sazzy to start eating, since this was the period where she usually was the most open, I started the conversation.

"It's been close to one month since I have been transported into this world, and I want to ask when will my brother be allowed to join this world? When you first brought up the deadline, it was three months, then it was six months. Could we settle a fixed month, and hopefully a date, for when my brother will come back?"

Chewing her food, Sazzy didn't seem to be very surprised about this question. Maybe she had even expected it to come up in a conversation a while ago. Swallowing, she placed her food down and pulled out her personal terminal.

[Hmmm. Then, how about we set the deadline to be 3 months from now. I was planning for us to go to one planet each month to do the big types of streams, just like your first stream. So every month there would be one big stream centered around a single ethnic group on another planet. Then the personal type of streams could be done any time you want in the meantime.]

Taping a date on her calendar, I looked at it and copied her, marking down that date as the day my brother would come home.

[The first three month deadline was honestly the tentative one, since it was unsure whether you would accept the deal. Then the second one, forget that I mentioned it. You could say there were some special circumstances that caused the tentative deadline to be doubled.]

Giving a side eye to Sazzy, I understood instantly what those 'special circumstances' actually were.

[Anyway, since we have finished the topic of your brother's arrival, we should move on to other important news. Just not too long ago, I got a message from the Headquarters for Intergalactical Travel about your passport. You got their approval for traveling, but only for the normal planets. For the types of planets we are aiming to go to, we need to go and get vaccinated for the various types of viruses that might be present. We should discuss the dates when you want to go, as well as the timings. The AT center usually offers simple vaccinations which should be enough for us to go to most planets. For the others, once we have to go to them then I'll schedule the appointments. Most vaccinations are so advanced that they can be done in one week anyway.]

Choosing the dates with Sazzy, we then continued the discussion about how we were to complete our mission. Firstly, as she said, once a month there would be a big stream. Then, for the benefits that viewers who paid for volts would receive, Sazzy suggested allowing them to retaste. In the settings, there is an option to allow certain sets of people to have a 'second serving'. Changing the option from none to volts only, an advanced setting option appeared.

Clicking it, I could customize how many 'second servings' each person would get, regardless of their volts, or even allow the volt number of even the leaderboard to determine the number of 'second servings' they got. Up until a certain customizable limit that is.

After discussing with Sazzy, I selected the option where those who gave volts could receive additional 'servings' until a max limit of 4.

Next was what planet Sazzy had in mind for the next big stream. Since Sazzy seemed more knowledgeable about this world than me, I left it to her to choose the next planet.

[Since our branding has basically been set as streamers who cook normally dangerous dishes with a side of history and cultural lesson, we are now limited to planets with unfavorable or even extreme ethnic cuisines. We have already done a stream about poison, so that eliminates all the planets that have infamous poisonous cuisine. And around half of the planets have too extreme conditions that we will not be able to get the necessary qualifications to exit out of the AT center.]

Scanning through the list of planets that Sazzy had made, she neatly crossed out all the ones that were not acceptable.

[This leaves the planets that are heavily parasitized, therefore people do not even dare to try their cuisine and they are shunned due to eating what the public consider 'dirty', or the planets that are undergoing industrialization and are so polluted that they have to import in fresh ingredients. There are also planets that are currently undergoing war, but for safety purposes I have not included them in this list.]

Looking through the list again, I followed Sazzy's movement just now and canceled the planets which she mentioned were extremely polluted.

"I've just arrived in this world and barely know that many dishes or cooking methods. If the planet is so polluted they need to import ingredients, most likely the majority of their cuisine will be international instead of native. I think we can forget these planets for now."

We were now left with around 16 planets on the list. Putting away her list, she pulled up pictures and information she had found online about the dominant ethnic group in these planets.

Putting each planet as a separate window, the wall of windows soon enclosed us into a space where all I could see were faces, animals and text. Suddenly, out of my left eye, a familiar shape caught my eye. It was a fish with what seemed to be a ribbon around its neck.

The planet's name was Aquarius, the water planet. around 90% of it was sea, and 100% of its cuisine was seafood. Unfortunately, 90% of seafood on the planet had parasites attached to them. On a survey done on the animals in their planet, it was found that the average animal contained at least 5 species of parasites, and the highest number of parasites on a single organism could reach the thousands. The natives themselves were not immune to parasites either. A trip to gather ingredients for consumption usually netted each person an average of 3 to 4 parasites.

The fish I saw was one of their native fish species being parasitized by an organism called the red ribbon worm. It usually latched onto its host's gills, and could overgrow and form a red ribbon like the picture I saw of the fish. It was actually one of the more significant fish and was sometimes the face of parasitized fish on that planet.

Noticing that I was staring at that particular planet, Sazzy minimized the other windows. After looking thoroughly through the information, she nodded her head.

[This planet does not look too bad! And since it caught your eye, it can be the planet we choose to go to. Most parasites there aren't fatal or take over the body, so we don't need any special requirements to visit. It's decided then!]

Finished with her words, Sazzy closed all the tabs except for that planet, and closed her personal terminal. She then got off the coach and headed for her room.

[I'll go research deeper into this planet so you don't have to worry about that! Other than that, everything seems to be settled so we can go to bed now! Good night.]

Without waiting for a response, she closed her door.

Silently picking up both hers and my plates, I brought them over to the sink. Glancing at the bottle of salt that I had poured on her dish earlier, I fell into deep thought.

This was the second secret that she was not telling me.