Sticking It to the Makers

Like any modern ship the GCS Tesla had artificial gravity. This alone heralded a change in the status of space from hostile and deadly to another place to work. Of course like oxygen, water, and food, you had to bring your own gravity.

The Tesla was an old ship and generating gravity was not always easy. It had it's share of down outs especially after the last major battles when the internal grid had a few holes poked in it. Repair efforts concentrated on the acceleration compensators to avoid turning crew into chunky salsa during FTL transition. No one had ever died of zero gravity. kay a few people did but those guys were downright primitive. They used disintegrating totem poles to merely get to orbit.

Regardless a few corridors lost gravity and stayed that way and the crew got to enjoy traversing them. This soon led to the Zero Gee Tumbling Course.

It was set up in the main darsal corridor. What it was, was a series of hatches modeled out of plastic and for gosh sakes, even wood in some cases! At one point the actual door to the Exec's cabin was used but the Exec made them put it back. To play you simply launched yourself at them, tucked and rolled hugging your knees. The further you got, the more hoops and hatches and holes you crossed the higher your score.

A week of meals cooked to order was put forward as prize by Cook.

Fun as had by all. All right nearly all. Tivk refused on grounds of his species not enjoying themselves ever. Mukh was disqualified when his slime let him slide through the hoops despite his girth. There was an intermission to clean the course.

The Chief was the high score most of the test. He was trained in EVA of course. It was his MOS. He did very well indeed. Then Riasi stepped forward.

Gentle, soft spoken Riasi with her purring soothing voice and felinoid ancestors and more 'quick' muscle bundles than two humans put together. She made a stir as she shucked her uniform (less chance of catching on something) stepped forward and leaped like a champion, tail swishing slightly and she sailed through 18 out of twenty obstacles. There was polite applause as she went to retrieve her uniform.

The Chief swore softly and left giving Riasi a salute.

But then GAIA, the ship AI stepped forward. GAIA had gotten many and numerous upgrades in her tenure as elected data cruncher. She was enjoying them. Don't give her any crap about self awareness. She had passed the Turing Test with an 8.5. The human administrator had scored a 7.8.

GAIA stepped forward and tossed her hair analogue shyly before retracting it.then she ran forward on her toes she just had her toenails polished,  right after the toes were installed. GAIA ran and then stopped at the line marking the point of leaping. As she stopped she detached her head.Leaving her body behind her head sailed through all twenty openings. there was loud cheering and heated debate as the Technical Officer grabbed her head and brought it over to reattach on her body, administering a thwap on her chassis for being a saucy bot indeed.

GAIA raised a fist in triumph, retrieved her shoes (a present from her Tech Officer) and ran off to tell the coffee machine and diagnostic tables what she'd done.


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