Telepresence Interference
27 Feb 2018Harry The Hatchet
Refilling The Tank3304-02-26, 16:29
Sol, Io, Columbus Station
Running errands from station to station was never exciting. Coffee, meat, clothes, composite alloys, missiles. If people eat it or shoot it at eachother, I haul it. Occasionally, in shipping lines, haulers like me pass each other by. Strapped in chairs, flung at hundreds of times the speed of light. With all that going on, it's no wonder we forget to say hello to eachother. Human progress has found a way to make lonliness the fastest entity in the universe.
Landing in Columbus station, Sol, eased some of that. My bird was being loaded with wares, while I was being loaded with booze. It's an ancient pass-time, you know. Another CMDR was also spending his time irresponsibly in the bar. We got to lazy conversation when he mentioned Telepresence. He occasionally opened his ship to CMDRs to beam themselves aboard. They would phase into the cockpit as constructs of hard-light and accompany him on his travels.
"Loneliness is difficult, but hours trapped in the cockpit with various strangers doesn't seem like a solution to me" I replied. He laughed. The throaty, genuine laugh that drunks do.
"It's your ship! When you're tired, you hit the FOB. Simple!"
According to him, the FOB is the Fuck Off Button. A neat command that switches your multi-crew status from 'looking for crew' to 'ship is closed' and vica versa. He blamed the disconnect on interplanetary gravation, bending the light and creating interference then hit the FOB. Cutting the other CMDR off. It was a neat trick, very guilt-free. At that moment, in the station bar, I wished I could blame interplanetary gravitation for leaving the conversation. But no such luck.
I made it back to my ship hours later. Mostly sober, I climbed aboard.
Interference
3304-02-26, 21:34
Some shipping lane, Lutyen's Star
She had short cropped hair and large eyes, like a boy. But also a small, soft face, marred by a slight scar. I wanted to ask her where the wound came from but being as she was my first telepresence crew member, I couldn't bring myself to offend her just yet. She had a small frame of a body, seriously wound with something to prove.
She picked through the controls of her seat immediately. Flicking through diagnostics, planet scans, bounty reports and so on. Then she wrang her hands, looked around and said "This is an older model Asp. This is probably older than me."
I felt the need to defend it; "She's scrappy on the outside but poetry on the inside. Like- "
"Like you, right? Cute." She cut me off, still searching around the cockpit. "Do you say that often?"
"No." I lied.
It was strange, having her in the other seat. We argued a little, over the two hours she accompanied me. She would mention the target station's distance at 100 light-second intervals. Every time. I would remind her that the canopy display already told me. Every time. She would reply that that is what co-pilots do. Every time. She continued to notify me of such useful things as the cargo not being quite properly secured, the cargo hatch had slight rusting, the ship lacked controllable turrets (along with any other kind of weaponry) and my FSD was poorly optimised. Then she commented on my lack of personal grooming and that was the final straw.
I FOB'd her. She blinked away immediately and I fumed silently for some minutes.
Then another CMDR connected. There she was again. Resuming her analysis of the ship with a knowing smile.
"Interplanetary Gravitational Interference?" she shrugged lightly. I threw my hands in the air. She joined me for a few hours more.
I told her my sop story about my wife. My ex-wife, she corrected. She told me her sop story about a major mechanical malfunction on her father's ship that blew the canopy and tore her face to ribbons. I didn't have any other sad stories to compared to her tale of facial reconstruction and frontal lobal recovery, so I showed her the first thing I had on hand. It was a punch ticket for docking, dated 3260. She floated across the cockpit and took it from my hand with silent interest. I explained to her that, not that long ago, some of the smaller stations still laser printed paper tickets. They gave them to pilots who planned to leave their ship docked for more than 24 hours. She bent the ticket back and forth carefully in her hand. She was rapt with amazement at actual, analogue, real paper. I claimed it as a victory.
Gravitation
3304-02-27, 03:11
Shinrarta Dezhra, Jamerson's Memorial
As we neared the final destination I noticed she had stopped giving me distance readings. I cleared my throat and asked, as captainly as I could: "Distance to destination?"
She paused for a second, in shock, then replied: "Two thousand light-seconds."
"One thousand light-seconds."
"Five hundred light-seconds and closing."
I overshot the station, naturally. I told her I was just doing a flyby of the planet to kill off speed. She told me they called it the Loop of Shame. With the loop shamefully complete, we docked. She waved goodbye and disconnected. The cockpit got very quiet very quickly.
I unclipped the seat harness and wandered over to the seat she projected into. I sat in the seat, I'm not sure why. I looked around the ship, as she did. It did seem shabbier from this angle. I noticed small sections of chasis with scratches, a wire peaking out from a panel, smudges on the canopy. I contacted the station services and told them I'd like a deep dive into the condition of my ship. They informed me that it was already commissioned by my first mate and they'd be carrying it out during my time at the station.
They were also going to sort:
- The rusting on my cargo hatch
- The power management on my FSD
- Install new fixtures in my cargo racks
- A touch up of the paint on the outside
- All new bolts for panels
- Re-application of all decals inside and out.
The list went on
She was making herself home in my ship. I couldn't bring myself to stop her. She was good.