"Let's follow the Quartermaster path," Doc says as he wipes his face down with an alcohol pad. "With any luck we'll find the armory, or Veronica, or both."
The path to follow is an indigo circle. For a short while it follows the same path as the VIP tour, but then breaks off and goes it's own way. The further through the maze they get, the more the other paths merge. Eventually, there are only two ways to go: forward or back.
They see a new set of lights appear on the wall, and hear a path open behind them. A yellow uniformed engineer carrying a toolbox rounds the next corner. He smiles and nods politely as he passes by them, indifferent to their presence.
At length the guiding lights lead them to a door. It is marked only by a series of letters and numbers.
"What is it?" Doc asks.
"No idea," Steve replies. He holds the orange keycard to the scanner. The door opens.
Inside is a spectacularly furnished office building. It's several stories tall, made of glass, chrome and blue steel. Doc counts six mezzanines with cascading stairways like a fountain. A bank of white uniformed secretaries sit behind a thirty foot glass desk, each working furiously to answer calls on their headsets, enter information into the holographic computer displays in front of them, and keeping up the appearance of being well kept and busy.
"Admiral Spaaz's Office, how may I help you?" echoes across the room once every two seconds in a variety of voices, followed shortly by "Please hold."
One young man looks up at them, stands, and approaches. The three black stripes across the torso of his white uniform denote his rank as Spaceman, First class. "May I help you, Lieutenants?"
Any Which Way...
Attack of the Space Pirates!
Doc whispers, "Hold up Steve, we've got company."
Doc and Steve both ready their Pain guns. Doc grips his switchblade tightly, his thumb on the release.
"Oi, maets, theres a fakin ferk intha road ahed!" One of the pirates says.
"Bout fakin taime. Letsch goe!"
"They're comming this way," whispers Steve.
"We should go back," insists Doc.
"Too late," Steve responds.
Doc watches the three men get to their feet and come around the corner. The red and blue superimposed blobs become flesh and blood faces. Three rough-looking characters who look like they were just tossed out of a bar, not for brawling but for fighting dirty. They have the surprised look of rats in a corner.
Doc fires his pain gun at their leader almost instinctively. Steve follows suit and hits the one to the left.
"FAK ME RUNIN," screams the leader. He tries momentarily to block the pain but finds all he can do is run back down the hall they came from. His right hand man does follows him, hunched over in pain as he goes back around the corner. Their other friend remains stunned in suprise.
But only for a moment. The pirate reacts with fighting instincts. He draws his own pain gun and fires it at Doc. The new armor helps, but that unfortunately familiar sting stabs him in the face like an elephant wearing golf shoes standing on his eyes. He has no choice but to back off and try to recover.
Steve turns his pain gun on the last pirate. His gristled five o'clock shadow mug gets assaulted by microwaves. He runs off with his friends. Steve backs off and joins Doc.
The leader of the pirates comes back around the corner, drawing his peculiar pistol from his leg holster. There is a lound blast as a lead slug breaks the sound barrier as it exits the muzzle of the weapon. The bullet whizzes overhead as Doc and Steve instinctively duck down.
Steve hits him again with the pain gun. Again he screams. He drops his weapon as he ducks back down the hallway. His buddy appears in his place, also wielding his pistol. He fires at Doc, but the shot goes wide and ricochets off a wall behind him.
The pirate that stunned Doc comes back around the corner, machette drawn. Doc sees him going after the fallen pistol. It's a race. Doc dives across the hallway and snatches up the weapon just as the pirate reaches for it. Suddenly, he's back in the holobooth playing Shootout! Doc turns the gun on the pirate and pulls the trigger.
There's no smoke or gunpowder, but the little thing has quite a kick. The bullet slides easily out of the muzzle, into the pirate's gut, and out the other side. The machete falling towards Doc head slumps weakly to the ground. The pirate doubles over, clenching his gut.
Meanwhile Steve keeps the second pirate back by hitting him again with the pain gun. The gun wielding bastard is again slammed with radioactive pain and is forced back around the corner.
The pirates' leader comes back around the corner an throws his fist at Doc's head. "Yeh fakin shot Donneh yeh faken mathefaker!" His rage amplifies his strength, and Doc takes it full on the temple like a wrecking ball.
Doc ignores the wounded pirate's pathetic attempt to avenge himself. The machete falls weakly against his armor, not even cutting through his uniform disguise. Instead, Doc turns the gun on his attacker and plugs him. Pirate leader's chest explodes against the back wall, and he falls to the ground to quietly bleed to death.
Steve attempts to kick the wounded pirate in the head, but he's still got enough faculties about him to move out of the way of the thick rubber lab boot.
The remaining pirate, the one who still has a gun, appears back around the corner. "SHAIM!" he yells as he levels his gun at Doc. His eyes are red with tears from the pain of loss and microwaves. The gun goes off wildly before his aim is anywhere near complete. The recoil removes the weapon from his shaking hand, flinging its self backwards down the hall. He slumps to his knees before his fallen comrade.
It's not long, though, before vengance returns to him. He draws a combat knife from his belt and charges at Doc. The blade sings past Doc stomach as he jumps back out of the way. Doc pops off a round at him instinctively, but it misses as his aim moves during the dodge.
"Ye killed Shaim! FAKER!" Yells the wounded pirate as he swings again with the machete. This time the blade connects. Doc feels the impact reactive gel stiffen up as it absorbs the blow.
Meanwhile, Steve runs down the hall for the gun. The knife wielding pirate takes a wild swing at him as he passes, but fails to accomplish anything. The wounded, machete wielding pirate named Donneh is unfazed by his inability to wound Doc, and takes another miserable swing, missing by a long shot. Steve reaches the gun. The unwounded pirate slashes at Doc.
Reacting on instinct, Doc catches the cold blade with his naked hand and immediately regrets the decision. The cut goes deep, but Doc holds on. He uses it to pull the pirate right into the muzzle of the gun. He fires. The pirate releases his grip on the blade and slumps to the floor.
"GAFF!" Yells the last pirate, Donneh. "Ye killed meh maits! YE KILLED MEH MAITS!" He raises the machete with a newfound well of strength and determination. He releases a warcry and begins to bring it down upon Doc. His brains leap from his skull and splash across Doc's face. The pirate falls to the ground, his weapon clanging to the floor beside him.
Steve holds the gun in his shaking hands. "I've never done that before," he says, shocked.
"You saved my life," Doc replies, nearly out of breath. "He was going to kill me. You had to do it. You saved my life."
"Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did."
Doc takes the satchel from him and digs out the medkit. He disinfects his cut, wraps it up, pops some pain pills, and does his best to wipe the blood off his face and uniform.
Steve inspects the bodies. Each of them were carrying InstaCredit cards, which are in essense miniature, portable electronic banks with no identification information attached. He also finds a keycard.
"Here's how they were getting around in here. Looks like they got a card off of some poor, probably dead staff officer. CPO Noel Peterson, QM. No idea where it leads. He could be a secure data courier, he could be in charge of laundry."
"QM is Quartermaser."
"Still, he could be in charge of handing out firearms or potatoes at lunchtime. Then again there's always the slim chance it will take us directly to Veronica. Should we follow it?"
Strange Encounters
Doc thinks a moment. "We'll follow the path to QFM. It sounds like the best bet and the least populated."
"Sounds good," Steve replies.
The hallways are poorly lit, but clean. Ambient white noise floods each modular section of hallway, but if they stay quiet Doc and Steve can barely hear the movement of the walls just beyond their range of vision. At all times remain the options to follow the red, blue, or yellow lights.
"I really don't get this," Doc asks as they get ever deeper into the bowels of the labyrinth. "Why build a ship this way?"
"It's pretty damn secure, isn't it? The walls know ahead of time whether or not to even let you go through. An can be totally isolated or even be lead straight into the brig, minimizing the need for security forces on the command deck. I actually doubt we'll run into any security officers on duty in here."
"But we may be being led straight to the brig?"
"Possibly, but I'm sure if that were the case they wouldn't bother giving us options."
"Still, why the cards and not biosensors? It really doesn't make any sense to go through the trouble to have moving walls and then give your personnel something they can easily lose."
"I don't know. Perhaps they're cutting corners. Even at five billion a pop for the cheap seats I'm sure there's not much profit margin on a ship this size."
The path twists and turn. Sometimes they're wide open corridors, sometimes they're tight, angular halls. It seems to go on endlessly. There's not another soul in sight.
"What about officers?" Doc asks. "Maybe I can understand emergency services being assigned to a single sector, but wouldn't a commanding officer need to get around the ship quickly and easily?"
"My guess is they're kept close to the sections they command. Plus they can do a lot remotely. Command is not usually very hands on."
"Well, what about the admiral or the captain? Don't they have to attend dinner functions and crap like that? Wouldn't they want a fast way in or out?"
"You've got a good point there, maybe there is something. We won't know until I can get to a terminal, though."
As they walk a little further, Doc hears something different through the white noise. It sounds like voices.
"Hold up," he tells Steve. He activates his glasses' X-Ray function (which is a misnomer as it is actually an infrared sensor with an active low level radar). There are three figures just around the corner. One of them is slumped sitting on the ground, the other two are leaning against the walls. They're armed. Two of them have guns of some kind. The other has...a machete?
"They're armed. I don't think they're crew members."
Doc listens a little harder.
"Oi, Gaff, why'n fischle didja think twas a gud idee ta breng us en this vessa? Shesa godham dethtrap."
"Fak yeu, Donneh, twas yur idee. 'Les goa cut-persin ona theis ol shoabote.' Yeh daft faker. We ha'ent founda penneh."
"Fak both eyeh. Yeu dronk taits both thaut twas a gud idee. Naw shot up an les kiep muvin. Thair's get tabee awahy offa dis faker."
"Peshoff, Shaim. Yertha onat godus lost in th's fakin plaise."
"Yeh, an eyel betha onet braings allhe fat lute bak tethe Cap'm. So ofyer arses, yeh fakin' pansies. Letsch goh or well ne'er findeh deim."
Which Way?
"Steve, if Veronica can do what Alyss can do, I'd like to schedule a short vacation. I'd like three days to visit a friend in Milwaukee, 'cause I owe her a slice of a good life and to make sure her dolls made it in one piece," Doc says as they finish getting their uniforms together.
"That could be arranged, I guess. We can talk about it later. Right now we need to prepare some lies," Steve says.
Doc is way ahead of him. He hands him the duffel bag. "Say we met at the Office of External Vehicular Interception as we both trying to get in touch with Veronica and hadn't been able to get ahold of her through normal channels. I need to schedule her physical exam as she is way, way past due and you've got some of her clothes from the Laundry Department by mistake. You only know their her's because she put her name in the waistband of her panties, not to mention he has a safety report that she signed off on that isn't even a part of the ship she is responsible for and you need to know if this is just a glitch or what.
"If that doesn't work, fess up to being old friends of hers and we did something silly to see her because when we used to work together years ago she was a hell of a prankster and would enjoy the joke of it all. With any luck, this will be a lie we don't have to tell."
"Hmm. Quantum Flux Monitoring is responsible for ensuring that there are no entangled particles in the plasma transfer to the fighter's fusion cores, so that if a fighter's core is breached it doesn't effect the mother ship's core and vice versa. There would be some interaction between our departments. It sounds like a plausible story. And the only way anyone would think she's still human is if she's been dodging medical exams somehow. Very good. I don't know about the panties, though. If anyone notices the clothes in the duffel bag they're going to notice they're not women's. How about we've just got back from some leave time and the lockers in the bathroom were broken?"
"That might work. Okay, where are we headed?"
"I don't know. There are two fighter bays, one port, one starboard. She could be in either, or neither. According to Schrodinger she's in both and neither simultaneously until we collapse the probability wave."
"That doesn't help. According to the map the tour guide gave us, the command section is nearly three miles across at the widest, and it's a fucking labyrinth."
"I know. I guess everyone is assigned a daily route to memorize and their keycards only opens the doors along that route."
"If I'm an EMT won't my card open up any door?"
"I would hope so, but it might only open doors in your assigned sector, or only during an emergency situation, maybe both. We don't even know what that sector is. The only map I can get is the one I recorded while on the tour. I'm not picking up any signals from the mainframe, so it must all be hardlined. We'll have to find a terminal if we're going to find a map. If I can get into the system, I might also be able to find out where Veronica is."
"Well, we know where the bridge is and there's terminals there. Do you think that would work?"
"It's the best chance we've got."
They leave the bathroom, disguised and ready. Immediately, there is a problem.
Doc realizes it immediately. "The fucking walls have moved."
"Shit," says Steve. "That's how everyone finds their way around. They don't. The computer only lets them go where they need to be by re-arranging the walls. Hell, the rooms themselves might even move around. We'd never know because of the gravity controls."
"Well, there's three ways to go."
"I expect one is your authorized path, another is mine, and the last is the VIP route out of here."
"How do we know which is which? "
"Look, those lights on the walls? Let's see your card."
Doc's card is medic blue with his rank's stars and stripes. At the bottom, there's three red dots in a triangular pattern. On the wall of the hallway across from the bathroom are three dim red lights matching the pattern. Steve's keycard has four green lights in a diamond pattern, the pattern to which is matched on the wall to the left. Their VIP cards have two yellow dots which match the lights to the right.
"Which way should we go?" Doc wonders. "The medical center might have patients with passcards we could use to get to the fighter bays. It might have computer terminals, too."
"The QFM office will definitely have terminals. I may be able to give our cards access to Veronica. If not, we'll definately have to find some cards that do. Which way do we go?"
Infiltration
Doc quickly delves into the surprised crewman's psyche. It's a fairly easy read; he's caught in a sudden situation where he might have to get security involved, and he's not wearing any pants. Also, he's somewhat homophobic.
Doc smiles at him. "Hey Sailor, need someone to scrub your back? If not, I'll just take a pee and be out of your hair."
"Uh, no thanks. Sorry, I thought you were someone else." He steps back into the shower and begins singing loudly to himself, trying to make the rest of the world disappear.
"That was close," says Steve. He goes back to the lockers with his multitool.
"Damnit, Steve, it's not going to work. We've got to find another way before you get us into deep shit."
"I've almost got it this time..." PZZT! A spark flares briefly, and all the electronic locks on all the lockers disengage. "Hah!"
Doc looks around. The crewman's loud singing has covered up the shocking sound. No one reacts.
"Okay, lets be quick. Here's a duffel bag for our clothes, 'cause, well, we can't leave them here in the lockers. I wonder why the hell all those locks are on the same circuit, anyway? Weird." Steve hands Doc a shirt and pair of pants, blue silk and nylon weave. As they change, Steve explains the rank and color system. "The color of the shirt denotes your job category. Blue is science and medical. Security is red, staff officers are orange, engineers are yellow, docking operations are green, warrant officers are indigo, pilots are violet, and commanders are white. Rank is denoted by the black stars and stripes on the shirt. It looks like we're junior lieutenants."
They're dressed now and their other clothes are in the duffel bag, which contains medical supplies. Steve hands Doc a passcard. It's also blue, and there's no picture on it, just a bar code and text: LTJG Antonio Sanchez, EMT. Steve's says: LTJG Horatio Zonk, QFM.
"What's QFM?"
"Quantum Flux Monitoring, I presume."
"Why on such an advanced ship with tight security controls do they use something as low tech as bar-coded passcards and RFID? Why no biometrics, or even a picture on the card?"
"Probably because they don't want pirates pulling out eyeballs and ripping off hands just to get through a door. Seems kinda pointless, though, they'll probably kill everyone they see, anyway. Maybe they just don't want a mess to clean up afterwards. I have no idea why there's no picture on the card, that seems kinda silly. Further, why don't they have a computer controlled bio-monitoring system that opens the correct doors for the correct people automatically? Those exist in this era, the DataPlex in Milwaukee had one. They're not even that expensive, really, just a lot of cameras and biosensors."
"Maybe they have a high rate of personnel turnover."
"It would still be easier to make a change in a database than to hand out new passcards."
"Perhaps they don't want a central database, in case it gets hacked by the pirates before they board."
"It's possible. Well, whatever the reason, it works to our advantage. C'mon, we've got to figure out how to get to Veronica."
A Philosophical Moment and a Trip to the Bathroom
Doc opens up his comlink to the Office of External Vehicular Interception. An automated response asks him to leave a message.
"Veronica, it's Doc. We're here on board the ship and we need to talk to you right away."
The automated secretary tells him that his message has been logged and to expect a response within 3 to 5 days.
"There's got to be another way to get hold of her," Doc tells Steve. "Doesn't she have a communicator in her head?"
"I already tried that. I think she may have disabled it, maybe to get by security devices, maybe to be more human. She wouldn't get very far in the EDF if they thought she was bugged. I can't imagine how she's avoided an X-Ray all this time, though. Her components may be organic, but one look at her internal structure and you know what she is."
The tour group continues forward. Lt. Roeker continues babbling on about everything he finds great about the ship's self contained food service industry. Doc and Steve fall farther behind. Steve keeps looking all the locked doors that they pass.
"Steve, I just had a thought. Forgive me if this sounds stupid, but do we need Alyss? Could you program Veronica with all the skills, memories, and reflexes of Alyss? I'm sure it would be complicated, but you are a smart guy. Couldn't we replicate her and save ourselves the trouble of chasing all over time looking for a woman who doesn't exist? We wouldn't have to get her exactly right, I mean what does it matter if we get her favorite color wrong, just as long as her piloting skills were complete. Besides, Veronica would be faster than Alyss ever could be as she can interface with the ship itself. There have to be detailed records somewhere of her flights. We could use those as a jumping off point. What do you think?"
"I think you're right. I've got a theory about this. It struck me the instant I found out Alyss Valia didn't exist. The fabric of space-time is incredibly complex, and our consciousnesses are tied in with it. Veronica's sentience forms from this relationship just as much as ours. But when she was activated, that consciousness had to come from somewhere."
"Are you saying she is Alyss Valia? That we inadvertently trapped her soul in a robot three hundred years before she was born?"
"It's just an hypothesis. Since she was programmed to pilot a very complicated ship and the nature of her brain was to remain open to heuristic learning, perhaps she was the perfect vessel for a certain consciousness waiting to be released into the universe. She no longer had to wait for Alyss Valia to be born. Perhaps we created the conditions which drew her out."
"You're talking about an afterlife. By proposing this hypothesis, you suggest that you can perform an experiment to prove the existence of life after death."
"I guess that's one way of putting it. I wouldn't call it that, really. I suggest that we exist as a potential for consciousness in a quantum particle-field energy which interacts with space-time in the sixth dimension. When the conditions are right, that field energy manifests its self as consciousness, just as particle interactions with the Higgs field creates mass. Think of it like an hourglass. Except this hourglass only allows grains of a certain size and shape to fall through. The grains in the top of the hourglass, field particles in the sixth dimension, have a potential energy to fall through the gap, which in this case is the material form; the physical shape of the universe, into the bottom bit, which represents our energy interactions with the physical universe. The shape of the gap is determined by quantum fluxuations of probabliltiy and causality, which we know can be manipulated from the bottom of the hourglass by our own actions. The question is, can it be manipulated from the top? Can we call ourselves into existance, and is that the case with Alyss Valia? Your extrordinary abilities seem to suggest that it is possible to freely exchange energy between the two sides of the hourglass, and that the physical universe can be manipulated not only physically, but mentally."
"So Alyss is a psycic potential that either called herself into existance, which affected the universe, or we affected the universe and called her into existance?"
"Probably both simultaneously. It depends on the observer. Since we cannot prove that Alyss intended to exist, or indeed that consciousness potentials are even capable of intention, we must assume that our effects on the universe called her into existance."
"But doesn't my ability prove that a consciousness can effect the physical universe?"
"It does, but since you already exist in the physical universe, we know you are capable of intent. What we don't know is whether potentials that don't exist phyisically are capable of manifesting themselves on their own, or if they experience consciousness while non-existant. Thus, we still don't know if there is an afterlife. Besides, we've no way of knowing whether Veronica is really Alyss Valia or another consciousness entirely. I just find it a fascinating coincidence that in a timeline where one exists, the other does not, and that they're both so similar in character."
"So do we need to continue after Alyss Valia? Can Veronica get the job done?"
"It's entirely possible. We won't know until we find her, though. Aha!"
Steve has stopped at a door. Like all the others, it is distinguished only by a series of letters and numbers which make little sense.
"What is it?" Doc asks.
"The only door our VIP cards can open." Steve opens the door. It's the bathroom.
It's a large bathroom with lockers and shower stalls, some of which are occupied.
"What are you doing, Steve?"
"We need some better security badges. And uniforms." Steve goes over to one of the lockers. It's a simple electronic combo lock. Steve pulls out a tool from his lab coat. It looks a bit like an electronic leatherman. He sticks a screwdriver end between the lock and the frame. He hits a button on the tool and jiggles it around in the lock. Nothing happens.
"Damn. Let's try another one." Steve says.
"Maybe we should try something entirely different," says Doc, unsure about this course of action.
"I have every confidence in your ability to talk us out of trouble," Steve replies.
"Paul? S'at you?" calls someone from a shower. Getting no response, the crewman continues humming and bathing.
Steve moves to the next locker and uses the tool again. Again, he can't get it open. "Shit!"
"Paul? I know it's you." The shower stops. "You tryin' to put itching powder in my suit again?" The crewman steps out of the shower wrapped in a towel. "Hey! You guy's ain't Paul."
The Nickel Tour
Just as Doc and Steve get up to leave the Paper Doll Casino, a rowdy countdown begins. All the view monitors switch to an external view from the bow of the ship. Saturn is in her full glory, the small moon Pan ferries the glittering Cassini Hotel through the beautiful river of the icy rings, and Titan is shinning gibbously beyond. The passengers all begin shouting out the numbers, like a New Year's Eve party.
"Ten! Nine! Eight!" Doc and Steve join them, swept up by the excitement. "Seven! Six! Five! Four! Three! Two! ONE!"
Silently, magically, Saturn and her moons begin to grow, slowly at first but then at an alarming rate. After a moment, when it seems they are not but motes of dust among the rings, the growth slows and begins to reverse. In an instant, Saturn shrinks away to nothingness.
The passengers cheer. Champagne is uncorked.
The stars beyond begin to lengthen and distort, turning bright red, then blue. They change shape and turn inside out, and then turn yet another, deeper inside out. They shift and dance as if the ship is inside a clear crystal disco ball looking out. Every now and again, the perception reverses as if the universe is inside the ball and they're looking in. Doc finds he can switch perspectives at will, meaning neither view of this crazy optical illusion is correct.
"Don't try to wrap your mind around it," Steve advises. "You could give yourself an aneurysm. C'mon, let's go find Veronica."
Just as he says that, a message arrives in Doc's glasses. The ship has just distributed the last transmissions received from Earth. It's from Nadine. She's sent him nude pictures.
----
"Welcome to the Central Engineering!" Lt. Roeker announces their arrival as the elevator doors open. He leads the small band of a half-dozen tourists out into an astoundingly huge and rather bland looking hallway. Doc and Steve keep to the back of the pack.
"The Marriott has two power cores. The primary is nearly two kilometers in diameter and contains a 5 solar mass neutronium core. The secondary is only a kilometer in diameter and contains a 2.5 solar mass anti-neutronium core. Matter and antimatter can be exchanged between the two cores via the central plasma conduit, and the energy of their annihilation reactions can be vented via the main engines, the retro-engines, or the main particle cannon. The antimatter core can be replenished by using converters on the main core, and the main core can be charged by the two Bussard RAM-Jet scoops on the wings. The wings are not just for style, they also provide a stable surface during atmospheric breaking and..." It's obvious he loves his job.
He leads the party down the hall, which is more like a highway, along the large cylindrical condiuts he pointed out. The area looks a lot like a small, enclosed city. Office buildings and factories line the main road while trucks and personnel carriers zip back and forth through the street.
"The buildings you see here keep the ship running smoothly. These buildings, or bulks as we call them, are administration buildings. They are departmentalized to handle all ships functions: Atmospheric and Aquatic Processing, Environmental Health and Safety, Hazardous Waste and Recycling Operations, Roads and Grounds, Structural Integrity Maintenance, Cosmetic Maintenance, Nuclear Engineering, Manuseisium Refinery, and many, many others. Behind these buildings are the associated facilities, and beyond those are employee quarters."
Lt. Roeker steps onto a waiting hover platform and allows the others to do the same. He guides it down the miles long corridor, pointing out points of interest which disinterest Doc and Steve.
"This is the secondary power core. It's main role is to power all low-level systems, but it can also act as a backup for the engine core. It also powers all weapons systems."
"What kind of weapons systems are on board?" Doc asks.
"Good question, always a favorite of mine to answer. Our primary particle cannon can fire a one gigaton pulse every thirty seconds, or a sustained 10 megaton beam. There are one hundred and twenty railgun batteries, thirty on each flank of the ship, as well as 30 torpedo tubes placed strategically around the hull. There are two fighter bays on the forward port and starboard sides, which we will pass in a moment. Each has a full compliment of twenty interceptors apiece. In all we can engage over two hundred targets at once. The hull is made of crystalized titanium, carbon nanofibers, ionized lead..." he goes on and on.
"So how do you think Veronica got involved with this ship?" Doc asks Steve.
"I'm not sure. I'm wondering why she's not with the Pear."
"They certainly are prepared for pirate attack. Is that common?"
"It's hard to say. Piracy is a strange thing to calculate, probability wise. Each dimensional sector we travel to by moving backwards or forwards in time has its own, lets call it a threat grid. A hot spot on the threat grid is a high probability of pirate attack, depending on environmental circumstances. Is there a good hiding place nearby? Is there a suitable fence on a nearby planet? Is there a good amount of high wealthy traffic? The distribution of these hot spots remains the same, usually. However, the intensity of the hot spots changes dramatically between causal dimensions. The only correlation I can find is the mean temperature of the interstellar medium. The colder it is, the more pirates there are. Of course, correlation does not equal causation, but it is an interesting relationship."
Doc stares at him a moment. "You really enjoy thinking deeply about these kinds of things, don't you? Solving puzzles?"
"Oh, yes. I've always loved diving deep into these kinds of problems. It's how I wound up inventing the Q-TIP. And I don't so much enjoy the solving of a puzzle as much as finding all the pieces, and even better, finding a new puzzle on the shelf."
"Do you ever cut loose? Relax? Forget all the crap log-jammed in your brain and just lose yourself in a moment?"
"Yes. Well, once or twice. In college."
Lt. Roeker stops going on about the intricacies of composite hull plating design and brings the hover platform to a stop. They've reached the end of the corridor where a large bulkhead separates the engineering section from the command center. It says so in large neon letters. The entrance to the command center looks a lot like a shopping mall.
"This is the Command Center! This area is restricted, but since you're all such great folk, we've got special VIP passes for you to get a secret look behind the curtian!" He hands out all the passes. "Now I've got some quick rules for you all, to make this tour as safe and fun as possible. Rule One, stay with me! Rule two, if you get lost, stay put and hit press the 'Help' button on your badge. Rule three, if you see red lights flashing while you're not with the group, lay down on the ground against a wall, and try not to trip anyone running past you! Rule four, touch with your eyes, not with your hands! Rule five, there's no rule five! Now let's have an awesome time!"
They enter the building. It's a maze of strangely angled corridors and dogleg turns, designed to protect against intrusion and internal nuclear detonations or other radiological incidents. Lt. Roeker continues babbling about how wonderful their security personnel are, and that there's openings in the HR department. "We're also looking for a new Psychological Councilor if you know of any licensed professionals on-board."
"Will we get to see the fighter deck?" Doc asks.
"Sorry, fella. That area's restricted, even to us VIPs!" The Lieutenant replies far too entheusiastically. "We do get to see the Command Bridge, though, how 'bout that?"
"Great." Doc replies, less enthusiastically. "Will we get to meet Veronica Autopilot?"
"Got a little crush on our star pilot, do we? That's okay, lots'a fellas do. Unfortunately, Captian Autopilot is always very busy and doesn't take visitors. She works so hard to keep all our pilots trained and ready, she hardly even sleeps! Now that's dedication. We will get to meet Captain Hosep Jazelwuud, the commander of the Marriott, as well as the head honcho himself, Admiral Spaaz! Isn't that great!"
"Wonderful. Can't wait." Steve says.
"Awesome! Come on, gang!" The guy either physically or psychologically immune to sarcasm.
Lt. Roeker keeps them on track through the winding corridors. They pass uniformed officers and personnel carrying datapads, smiling politely at them as they meander through the halls.
"So," Doc says, "I gotta know. How did you come by twenty billion dollars in the first place?"
Steve looks a little embarrassed. "Well," he starts. "I kinda, sorta, stole it."
"Really? You don't seem the bank robber type."
"Well, it wasn't a bank, actually. It was ideas. Patents, mostly. For little things. According to the recordbooks, I've invented a minor component of every major appliance from 1910 to the end of time, which is regrettably near. I change the name all the time, of course, but the royalties all funnel into the same account. Every so often I head out to the year 2400 and withdraw a few billion. I put half of that into my active account, and put the other half back into the main account sometime before Q-Net is invented, but after the collapse of the banks in the 21st century, of course. The interest on that is compounded, and by the time I return to 2400, my account doubles in size. Usually. Bank collapses are like pirate attacks, you can never quite predict them, dimension to dimension."
"So you have an infinite fountain of money?"
"Well, not entirely. Q-Net banking restrictions are wildly complicated. It's very difficult to compound interest annually when your information is stored atemporally. Every once in a while they catch on to the re-compounding scheme and destroy those funds and the interest, but the flow of patent royalties always ensures there's something in there. I try to keep ahead of them by maintaining several accounts but that just leads to complications. Quantum fluctuations of causal dimension jumping cause randomization of certain numbers, like bank account numbers. I probably have accounts out there I'll never find."
"Sounds complicated."
"Just the way I like it."
The tour comes to the main bridge. It's the most exciting thing they've seen on this trip, and that's not saying much. It's a very large, wide open area with a view-screen miles wide. Aisles of computer banks and their operators sit amongst the ant-like scurrying of gofers and their commanders. Personal hover vehicles zip around overhead, overseeing the activities on the bustling floor. Lt. Roeker directs them all to another hover platform charging along the wall.
While the lieutenant flies them up towards a particularly important looking cluster of scooters, Doc makes the mistake of looking out the window. The wild vortex of trans-dimensional travel combined with the flying of the hover platform makes him a bit dizzy. He puts it out of his mind.
The Admiral greets them warmly with a prepared speech about how grateful he is that they're traveling with him and how they've taken an interest in how the ship operates, and that he has every confidence in his crew on making a safe, relaxing, and exciting voyage.
The Captain follows up with a brief and fully uninformative description of how he pilots the ship with his little command pad there, the command structure of the crew, and a dulled version of the finer points of XD drives. Essentially, he presses a little button and a thousand other people do the jobs of calculating things he doesn't quite understand and applying physics he cannot comprehend. The meeting is brief, as apparently he's got a lot of hovering around to do, but the other tourists are glad for the opportunity to meet him and express their gratitude.
As the group prepares to depart from the bridge and wrap up the tour, Doc tries again to get hold of Veronica. "Are you sure we can't arrange a meeting with Veronica? We're friends of hers."
Lt. Roeker is getting a little tired of Doc. "I'm sure you are, buddy, but Captain Autopilot is a very busy lady. Besides, she doesn't like men, in fact, she hates them. Sorry to burst your bubble, there."
"No, I know that, and I know why. I don't want to sleep with her, I want to talk to her. Like I said, she's a friend of ours. Now, maybe she is very busy, and I understand that. What I want to know is how can we let her know we're here so she can call us when she's not busy?"
"She's never not busy, fella. The woman never sleeps. She like a machine. You can submit a meeting request to the External Vehicular Interception main desk, but don't expect a response. Now, our time is almost up and we've got to get back to the lifts. If anyone has any more questions about the ship, please, ask away!"
