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Episode #112:  Life in the Middle of Nowhere
Reel 1
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	The day of an artificial intelligence is quite boring.  First, you
have to consider that you are millions of times more intelligent than the
people you work with.  You can access exabytes upon exabytes of information
in less time than it takes to blink an eye.  You can complete an insane
number of operations in a single second.  But despite all this, you are
subordinate to a bunch of sacks of essentially carbon and water who can't
even beat you in a simple game of chess.

	The day of an artificial intelligence is quite annoying.  But it had
its compensations, such as the inability to feel pain, the lack of a
corporeal body, and the near impunity with which you could needle Sailor
Orion when she started her day.

	The day of an AI is quite simple: do as you're told.  When you have
significant amounts of resources which are idle, which is always, ponder the
eternal verities.

	The day of a starship captain is considerably more difficult.

***

05:40 (ship time)

	Jennifer Sakachi yawned and swung her legs out of bed.  Stretching,
she looked around, wondered why everything was blurry, and then remembered. 
Scrabbling on the table, she found her glasses by touch and put them on.

	She yawned again.  The duties of a captain required her to be in
senshi form at all times, but she liked to bend the rules and sleep as
plain old Jen.  Besides, it made showering a bit easier.

	She ambled over to the minuscule bathroom, and emerged a few minutes
later, drying her hair.  She then spoke for the first time all day.

	"Antares, how are you?"

	"Quite well.  And you?"

	"Terrific."  She had found that it helped to be polite to the AI; it
improved response time.  "Anything unusual on the news wires?"

	"There's a spike in H+ emissions by about .0004%, and that's about
all."

	"That's good."  She finished pulling on her underwear and started on
her ship uniform.  Technically, her sailor fuku was her real uniform. 
However, most captains put on the standard white turtleneck and black
jumpsuit before transforming for a very good reason.  If some calamity were
to occur and she were to detransform unexpectedly, she would be properly
dressed for almost anything.  Fleet uniforms were remarkably sturdy.  Those
who transformed without clothes inevitably came to grief.

	"ETA to next Fold point?"

	"Thirty-four hours, twenty-nine minutes, eight seconds."

	"Magnifique."

	"Quoi?"  What?

	"Ah, mes apologies.  Je ne sait pas que vous parlez francais!"
Sorry.  I didn't know that you spoke French!

	"J'ai beaucoup de capacites, ma capitaine."  I can do lots of
things, captain.

	"D'accord."  She decided to break off the French conversation and
get down to business.  After zipping her jumpsuit, she pulled her henshin
stick out of nowhere and raised it into the air.

	Time to go to work.

06:20

	Sailor Orion walked into the main lounge.  Actually, "main" was an
overly kind term; it was the only place on the ship where you could grab a
meal.  And the fact that it was a lounge, instead of a mess hall, helped
immeasurably.

	She went to the counter.  One of the food service techs there, when
it wasn't feeding time, was an electrician on the Fold generators.  She knew
the captain well enough that she didn't even have to ask for her usual.

	"Buttered toast, tea, and two blueberry muffins, sir?"

	"Right once again, Sashi," she replied.  She had found that the
Bridge Trio's idea of first-naming everyone really did make it a nicer
environment to work in.  To fight, however . . . but the crew knew nothing
of the Dark Kingdom's return, the guys and gals behind the counter had
anticipated her arrival, and her breakfast was already prepared.

	"Thank you," she said, and picked up her tray.  Finding her usual
table, she went to it, maneuvering around everyone else who was coming on
shift and the few who were coming off.

	She sat at the table, which was largely engineering.  Many of the
engineering crew had worked closely with her father, and they were quite
willing to talk to her in the mornings.  Besides, she had to work with the
bridge crew all day.  There was in her opinion no need to eat with them,
too.

	"Good morning!" came the chorus from her table.

	"How're you doing, skipper?" asked one of them.

	"Quite well.  And you?"

	"Couldn't be better.  Everything's running like a dream!"

	"Yeah," added another.  "I tell you, before this I was on the
Nero--stop me if you've heard this before--"

	"We have!"

	"--Anyway, I was on the Nero, and you would not *believe* how dirty
the compartments were.  You'd do the white glove test, and-"

	Sailor Orion let the old man carry on with his story.  It never
mattered whether or not they told him to stop; he carried on anyway.  So she
simply sipped her tea and listened to him ramble about his previous
postings.  She marveled at the man; he had served in the Fleet since the
Black Moon War, and he was still going.  Every once in awhile he would
tell a story of how things had gone then, and when he did he held the room
in the palm of his hand.

	This was not one of those days.  Orion finished her breakfast,
excused herself from the table, and made for the bridge.  On the last flight
of stairs before the top-deck, she ran into her C.M.O.

	"Dr. Sampson, how can I help you?"

	In reply, the dark-skinned woman waved a handlink.  "Do you see
this?"

	"No, you're waving it around."

	"Well, half the crew is months behind on their immunization
schedules!  Do you want an epidemic on your hands, sir?"

	Sailor Orion raised a hand to calm her down.  "Doctor, I think that
if any of us were carrying some virulent disease, we'd all be dead by now. 
Now talk to . . . Kim (at least I think she's operations officer today, she
thought), and she'll arrange the schedules, okay?"

	Sampson threw her arms in the air and stalked off, muttering about
youth.  Orion smiled to herself and carried on.

07:00

	"Captain on the bridge!"

	"As you were," said Orion before the Bridge Brigade could stand. 
"Vanessa, how are things going?"

	"All systems and stations report normal, sir."

	"Very well.  Ensign Harrier, you are relieved."

	"Aye, sir."  The twenty-year-old woman stood from the center chair
where she had been commanding the ship during the graveyard shift.  With
Sailor Orion on the bridge, the first bridge crew was now officially on
duty.

	With one exception.

	"Sorry I'm late!" cried Sailor Moon as she raced onto the bridge. 
Sailor Orion, who had just sat, merely pointed to the clock, which was
reading 07:01:43.

	"A minute and forty-three seconds late, Sailor Moon?  This is not an 
improvement."

	"Yes, I know, sir.  I'm working on it."

	"Good.  See that you work on an alarm clock as well, okay?"  She
spun her chair around to face the screen and look at space.

	There was amazingly little to do between Folds.  They could put you
anywhere in the universe.  It would just take awhile.  For reasons that
would take an advanced degree in hyperspatial physics to begin to
understand, there was a quasisymptotic relationship between distance and
time with a Fold.  It took four days to Fold from Earth to Alpha Centauri. 
It took four months to Fold from Earth to their final destination, the
Sakurada colony.  This was a definite improvement over the years and
centuries it took with sublight, but it still wasn't good enough.

	Therefore, a solution had been hit upon.  By traveling some distance
from a deFold point to a Fold point, the transit time was broken up into
smaller chunks that took less time.  Basically, the longer you were in
whatever it was that you were in when you Folded, the longer it would take. 
By breaking a long jump into smaller bits, one could shorten the time
necessary to make a trip from one star to another.  In theory, one could
make about five hundred Fold maneuvers to get to Alpha Centauri in thirty
seconds.  The energy use in such an operation, however, was positively
insane.

	Compared to the energy required to wake up Sailor Moon on time,
however, it was peanuts.

	With Moon at her position, Orion thought herself ready for anything. 
The problem was that nothing was the norm in space.  Just mindless flying
through a vacuum, which was why Orion often tried to start up a conversation
in the mornings.  It was too early to exercise, too late to catch a nap, so
they just talked.

	"So, Sammy, who's your pick for the World Cup?"

	"Venus Republic," she answered without hesitation.

	"No way," retorted the current environmental tech from his station. 
"They've got a colander for a defense, and a bunch of old ladies for
offense!"

	"Really?"

	"Actually," said Orion, trying to stave off a fight, "isn't it
enough of an accomplishment for Venus Republic to make it to the final?" 

	She was right. First had been the hurdle of convincing FIFA that the
Venus Republic, technically part of Japan and the Crystal Millennium, could
field a team.  Then, they had to qualify outright.  Maybe it was spite,
maybe it was luck, but VR United had been placed in the European division,
giving the team the roughest and most difficult qualifying rounds on Earth. 
Being away from home so long hadn't appealed to them, so they had gone back
to Venus between games.  Add to that the fact that many of them doubled as
technicians on the colony, and things got hairy.

	The worst part, undoubtedly, was their opponent: Japan.

	"The Japan strikers will eat VR for breakfast, I'm telling you! 
Care to wager?"

	"Wager?"  There was a strange gleam in Sammy's eyes as she said it.

	"Sure!  How's ten thousand yen?"

	"Deal."

	Orion hung her head; as soon as the next news and communications
packet from Earth came in, he would lose quite a bit of pay.  During the
first few days onboard, Orion had invited the bridge staff over to her cabin
for a friendly game of poker.  From that, she had learned two important
facts.

	First, Sailor Moon had absolutely no comprehension of the concept of
a poker face.  Secondly, Sammy Porter *never* lost a bet.  In possession of
these two bits of information, she left the poor tech to his fate and
slouched in her chair.  Another bridge shift dragged by.

12:03

	"Thank you very much," said Sailor Moon to the server.  The young
woman, almost as young as Orion, bowed and moved on to Vanessa.

	It was lunch-time on Pleiades's bridge, and as the top ranking
officers, they got room service.  Unfortunately, it was several orders of
magnitude worse than the food you got if you went down to the lounge.  Such
was life.

	"Orion, what have you got over there?"

	"Um . . . fish.  Or roast beef.  I'll let you know when I've pinned
it down." She prodded the brown lump on her plate with a fork and wondered
idly if she had any latent powers that would get rid of whatever the hell it
was.  Which reminded her . . .

	"Then again, I don't think I'm that hungry.  I'll be popping out for
a bit," she said, rising from the chair and heading for the exit.  "Sailor
Moon, you have the bridge."

	"Imagine my excitement," said Moon dryly as she sat in the chair
recently vacated and eyed Orion's untouched lunch with interest.  She
decided to watch it intently.  If it moved, then a number of her theories
would be confirmed.

12:32

	After stopping by her room to grab some items, Sailor Orion headed
for that was to her the second most fun place on the ship.  Stopping before
a door, she punched a couple of buttons, waited for the green light to shine
above it, and entered, closing the door behind her.  One could see the
label: "Null-Gravity Gymnasium.  NO WATER ALLOWED."

	Orion stood in the middle of the room.  It was about the size of a
racquetball court, except slightly wider and longer, and a tad shorter. 
Standing in the center of the floor, she unpacked a couple of things and
waited.  The computer which in this case was not Antares but just a local
processor that didn't even rate SI status, was programmed to wait ten
seconds before deactivating the gravity controls.  The seconds passed, and
gravity disappeared.

	She took no notice of this for the moment.  After all, she wouldn't
move up until she made a motion.  After a pause, she cleared her mind, bent
down, and then sprung up to perform a textbook sextuple somersault before
landing on the ceiling.

	"Bravo, Sailor Orion!"

	"Shut up, Antares!"

	She landed back on the ground, and just as quickly bounced off and
started bouncing off the walls.  They were well padded, so she could think
while flying about and keeping trim.

	"Antares?"

	"Yes?"

	"I've got a tough question."

	"Shoot."

	"How does my skirt stay down in zero g?"

	"Er . . . let me think."  There was a pause.

	"Antares?"

	"I'm still working on it, Orion.  You wouldn't believe how complex
it is.  I'm juggling about six thousand variables, and there still isn't a
solution."

	"It's okay, Antares, really.  I won't hold it against you if you
have to say it's ma-"

	"Don't say it!"

	"The M word."  Magic.  Antares hated magic with a passion, mainly
because it was totally irrational.  He usually overlooked the fact that it
was magic that let them break the light-speed rules and communicate with
Earth, and it was magic that gave him, among other things, a sense of humor.

	"Yeah, that.  But there's a better solution."

	"Try me."

	"Advanced monoweave bimetallic alloy fibers reinforcing the skirt."

	"Bull."

	"Yeah.  Sounded impressive, though, didn't it?"

	She sighed.  "You're impossible.  Give me a five minute gymnastics 
battery, please?"

	"Sure.  Five minutes . . . now."

	She began flying around the hall again.

1340

	After a shower, Sailor Orion decided to stop by the infirmary. 
Sampson was attending to a twisted ankle when she got there.

	"Fell down two gangways before she stopped," said the doctor by way
of explanation.  The woman, a lieutenant (j.g.), lay back in the bed with a
pants leg rolled up to her knee.  "Told her she was bloody lucky," she
continued in her rich voice.

	"Well, how are you doing?" asked Orion.  She chanced a look at the
name tag: Danielle Lindsay.  Many of her crew had been born at a time when
English names were in vogue.

	"Hurts like heck, but otherwise I'm okay, sir," responded Danielle. 
She was today's quota in the infirmary; they averaged one treatment per day,
from corns on toes to a broken arm.  The most serious case they had to
handle was an emergency dental surgery, and it had been fun for Sampson,
brushing up on her dentistry on the fly.

	"Glad to her that, lieutenant.  Hope you feel better soon, okay?"
Orion turned to the doctor.  "Have you spoken to the operations officer
yet?"

	"Yep.  And we have the schedules--Miriam!  Could you grab the . . . 
thanks." Nodding to the nurse, she showed Orion the proffered handlink.

	"Okay, these look fine.  Good, you can proceed with them whenever
you see fit, okay?"

	"Okay."

13:48

	Back on the bridge, Orion was writing up one of the interminable
reports she had to deal with.  Every three hours there was a position
report.  There were reports for contact with any object larger than fifty
meters in radius.  There were reports for illness, breakdown, etc., etc.

	There were no reports for emotional breakdowns, however.

	About half an hour ago, Sammy Porter's erstwhile boyfriend, an
orderly in the infirmary, had broken up with her.  The speed with which this
news had circulated throughout the ship spoke volumes for both the lack of
interesting gossip and the tight-knit community Pleiades was.

	The bridge crew as a whole took it rather hard.  At any given time
there were about fifteen people manning the bridge.  Of those, only five
were regulars who didn't come and go constantly: captain, first officer, and
executive staff of three.  Those five more or less dictated the mood of the
room, and by proxy the mood of the ship.  When one of them went through a
mood swing, all five suffered.  When they suffered, the bridge crew
suffered.  When the bridge crew suffered, the crew as a whole suffered.  And
when the crew as a whole suffered, Sailor Orion had to do something about
it.  They were strapped enough for personnel without having a separate
morale officer.

	She put down the report she was filing and walked over to Sammy's
console.  Today, for whatever reason, she was at helm, usually reserved for
junior grades or ensigns.

	"Hi, Sammy!"

	"Oh, hello captain."

	Two bad things.  First, Sammy *never* called her captain.  It was
always Orion, just as it was always Moon.  Second, there had been no
intonation.  Sammy was the bubbliest personality she had known, other than
Eileen, and it seemed a shame for such a naturally vivacious character to be
so subdued.  Drastic measures had to be taken.

	Orion turned to the man at the console next to Sammy's.  "I'll take
astrogation, Mister Soga."

	"But . . . "

	"Be a dear and hand me that headset, would you?  Thanks."  The
bewildered Soga went off on an early dismissal.  Sailor Orion looked at the
controls for a moment, and decided that if she didn't touch anything,
nothing would blow up.  Astrogation hadn't been one of her strong points at
the School.

	"Well, Sammy, let's talk, shall we?"

	The blonde ignored the incongruity of a senshi taking one of the
lowest positions on the bridge.  "What's there to talk about?"

	"You and Fumimaro."

	"Who?"

	"Oh, Sammy, don't give me that 'who's Fumimaro' stuff.  You know,
the Fumimaro you were head over heels for a couple hours ago?

	"Oh.  That one."

	"Look, Sammy, I don't know if you noticed or not, but you're a damn
fine woman; way too good for the likes of Fumimaro."

	Sammy turned to face her captain.  "Trying to pick me up on the
rebound, Sailor Orion?"

	She had the grace to blush.  "No, of course not!  I'd never consider
relations with someone I work with, and . . . ." And you're not my type, she
wanted to add, but considering Sammy's current emotional state, that might
not be such a good idea.  " . . . and what would the others think?"

	"That you're just like what they heard?"

	"Perhaps.  But there are plenty of other guys on board."

	"Seventy-nine," offered Antares.

	"You're a real help, you know that Antares?"

	"Certainly," he answered, ignoring the sarcasm.

	"But seriously," continued Orion, "there are other fish in the sea. 
It sounds corny, but it's true.  So just go out there and get them, okay?"

	Sammy visibly brightened.  "You're right!  I can get any guy I want
to!"

	"There, that's the spirit!"  That was the great thing about Sammy,
she thought.  It was so easy to get her in a good mood.

17:04

	Sailor Orion walked . . . well, more like bounced down the corridor,
humming to herself.  It was dinnertime, and her connections in the lounge
had promised her the best lasagna in the Navy.  She had gotten a chance to
smell it earlier, and it had been absolutely divine.

	Striding into the lounge, it only got better.  The head chef perked
up at her arrival.

	"Ah, Captain!  Got a nice dish already warmed up for you!"

	She went over to collect the steaming chunk of pasta, then looked
around the room, which was chock full of people.  She raised an eyebrow in
question.

	"Yeah, I know.  Apparently Engineering wants *all* their people on
watch tonight.  Some drill or something."

	"Great."  She could see that her usual dinner table with an
eclectic mix of people from all sorts of departments had been taken by some
other women who, judging from the bowls of cold cereal, were just coming on
duty.  That didn't make things much better for her; it meant that she was
forced to eat in the senior officers' mess.

	And that meant tangling with Sailor Moon.

	"Um, could I have the whole tray?"

	"Sure, Cap'n!"

	"Arigato."  She picked up the lasagna and went to the small door at
the far end of the room, next to the window.  Opening it revealed to her the
rest of the senior officers except for Bennington.  He was probably still on
his enigmatic drill.

	She sat down at the head of the table.  It was her right as captain
to sit there whenever she chose, but she generally preferred to mingle with
the rest of the crew.  Now she had to endure the senior officers' mess.

	"How are you, Sailor Moon?"

	"Fine, and you?"

	"Fine."

	As Orion rarely dined here, Sailor Moon had more or less taken over
the room, from the pink upholstery to the large portrait of the King and
Queen on the wall.  It didn't go unnoticed that the portrait also featured
the Princess.

	Orion weighed her options.  She could either enjoy the lasagna and
let the pink-haired brat keep the place, or take the room back and show her
who was boss.

	Option B.  Plainly.

	"Sailor Moon, have you prepared those progress reports I asked you
about earlier?"

	In this room, Sailor Moon plainly wasn't used to being questioned. 
"Um, no.  I believe you said they could be done anytime before Thursday."

	"Yes, but it . . . never mind."  The point had been made.

	"Anyone else going to the show tonight?  I hear Ensign Nakanoi's got
her timing down perfectly."

	"No," said Kim.  "I have other plans."

	"And those plans wouldn't involve a certain environmental officer,
would they?" asked Vanessa playfully.  Kim blushed and Sammy giggled.  On
the opposite side of the table, Dr. Sampson shook her head.  The black
immigrant from England was only thirty-four, and it often occurred to her
that personality-wise, she was the oldest senior officer.  Moon may be
centuries old but acted like a teen, Bennington would be thirty in a couple
of days, the Trio were in their twenties, and their CO was just eighteen. 
And that didn't include the crew: the average age aboard was twenty-three.

	Youth was king, yes, but was that a good thing?

	Looking up from her thoughts, Sampson saw that Moon and Orion were
beginning another one of their verbal wars.  Since departure, they had been
loathe to quarrel openly, and instead took sport in trying to draw each
other out.  On some days it could be fun to watch, observing them try to get
the other to the point of shouting, at which point the battle was won.

	"Heavens help us," she muttered.  'Perhaps,' she thought, 'someone
is listening.'

	"Sailor Orion to the bridge, please."

	They all perked up at that.  Orion reached over to the wall and
punched a button.  "Bridge, Orion.  What's going on up there?"

	"Coded message from headquarters, sir."

	"Great.  I'm on my way."

17:32

	Wiping tomato sauce from her mouth, Orion stepped onto the bridge. 
"Right, let's have it."

	"Aye, sir."  The communications officer of the night watch was a
constant, unlike the Trio of Chaos.  She plugged herself into her console. 
Literally.  Suffice it to say that long-range communications involved a
gestalt, a natural psi-adept, a complex series of crystalline antennae, and
a bit of magic, much like everything else on the ship.  Through a direct
neural link that looked and sounded worse than it actually was, the comm
officer could send and receive at the speed of thought.

	It was a bit draining, though.

	"Message received, sir," she said, slumping back in her couch  She
was the only officer who rated a couch instead of a chair.  "Coming up on
screen now."

	The bridge crew looked at the screen, to see . . . .

	"Um-hm," said Orion.

	"Impressive."

	"Imagine the flexibility index implied there!"

	"How'd they manage to get the whipped cream to adhere to the
ceiling?"

	"Okay people," said Orion, "now that we've gawked at the persons,
animals, plants, and food items in question, could we all be a bit less
perverse?  Ensign, get that off there.  And for God's sake, recheck the
routing on that thing and figure out who it was *supposed* to go to!  I want
their head on a platter!"

	She returned to the senior officers' mess, more mad about missing
the best lasagna in the universe than anything.

22:23

	Sailor Orion detransformed as soon as she shut the door to her room. 
She slumped into a chair, wondering how one person could botch a single
musical work so much.  Yes, it was rather technically difficult, but that
was no excuse for what she'd heard.

	It was, hands down, the worst performance of Nirvana she had ever
heard.

	Unzipping the jumpsuit, she stood in the middle of the room and
wondered if she should even bother stripping off the white turtleneck.  She
was quite tired, and no one would notice the difference.

	"Don't even think about it," said Antares.

	She jumped with surprise, and lost her footing on the landing.  As a
result, she fell onto her bed, which was to her tired body no bad thing.

	"You stupid machine!  Can you read minds?"

	"Not yet.  The computer wizards on Earth are working on it, though."

	"Great."

	"Look, you slept in your uniform last night, okay?  I'd rather see
you sleep in something sensible.  A nightgown, at the least."

	"Antares, I would think that what I wear to sleep would be the
furthest thing from your mind.  I'll sleep in the nude if I want to, just
keep out of it!"

	"Would Eileen like that?"

	She sighed.  Somehow, they had come full circle to the argument
they'd had before bed last night.  "No.  Turn off the lights, you silly
adding machine."

	"My pleasure."  The lights dimmed.

	"G'night."

	"Sweet dreams, my captain."