The next morning on Ring #8 of the Ten-Sun Greenhouse Belt, a loud, contented yawn vibrated through the reinforced star-glass dome of the Royal Greenhouse Suite.
YAAAAAAAWN—CHIRP!
Inside a custom-built, fifty-mile-wide circular pasture carpeted with soft, warm golden corn husks and heated to a cozy eighty-two degrees by the sun below, the ten-mile-long Ancient Locust Queen (Rank 8 Late) slowly rolled over onto her stomach and stretched her six butterscotch-gold legs.
For the first time in three thousand four hundred years, the Queen woke up without a single stomach cramp, without poison needles stuck in her head, and without a grumpy green old man screaming at her to spit acid!
Instead, waiting right in front of her feathered golden antennas were: 1. A ten-thousand-ton mountain of freshly husked, juicy Rank 7 Golden-Ear Spirit Corn Leaves still dripping with sweet morning dew. 2. A two-mile-wide marble drinking trough filled with warm Sweet-Spring Clover-Honey Water. 3. Four Automated Back-Brushing Golems—modified by Boom-Pot Sun from street-sweeping trucks—holding giant rotating brushes made of soft boar bristles dipped in fragrant osmanthus oil!
WHIRRRRRR—SCRUB-SCRUB-SCRUB!
As the four giant brushing golems rolled along the Queen’s ten-mile golden carapace, polishing her shell until it gleamed like imperial topaz and scratching that exact hard-to-reach spot right between her middle wings, the Ancient Locust Queen let out a purr so loud it sounded like fifty tractor engines idling in harmony!
