Surprise Dinner Party
07 Mar 2017Per-Ja Ferra
The Far Reach continues to drive toward the Great Annihilator. Things have fallen into they typical routine aboard ship, at least what is typical for me. Sleep, eat, jump and repeat. I'll do 11 hours at the helm, and take the 10 hours down time that the Pilot Federation Requires of us. The other three hours of my work day is spent at various maintenance and route planning tasks. When I have passengers on board for these long hauls I'll take an hour or so a day to prepare meals and do other on board service jobs. You all know the rules no more than 14 hours on duty. After the 14 hours I grab a shower and take a cycle in the rack. After that back to it.Things have gone like that for the last two days. Today however things went differently. I had just made the jump into my 1000ly way point and was swinging bringing up the nav map when my passengers wife came into the cockpit. I keep an open hatch policy. Asp X's are small and while the lower portion of the cockpit has a great view I find that my passengers are often interested in what I do in the command chair. I was about to ask her what she needed when she announced that dinner would be served in twenty minuets. To say I was startled was an understatement. Most of my passengers are to rich to even touch a cooker, let alone know how to use it.
It was a great meal. Turns out that my passenger and his wife made their money as restaurateurs. Both of them are excellent chefs and found my skill with a cooker lacking. Rather than just complain they decided to take stock of my food supplies for the trip and have relived me of the duties of cooking. All they ask was that I make dinner a set time in my daily schedule. We sat and ate and talked. It was a fine evening and the meal was better than any I could have made from the cooker that is for certain.
With luck we will make the Great Annihilator in two days. I'm looking forward to it. My passengers told me that the night, ships night, we make our destination that they want to take an entire day to enjoy the view. During that day I was told that I would not be allowed to do anything other than required ship board work. It was to be a holiday for me. I can't complain to much...they are paying me after all. According to the note they sent me we will be watching another earth classic that evening. "Black Hole" a movie by the Disney Corporation filmed in 1979. Should be interesting to see how they interpreted singularities a 1000 years ago.