Hello dearest readers, I'm just adding a note here to say that I'm taking a bit of a winter vacation. I'll be back in the new year with more Critical Future's stories, but in the mean time, visit tychoish.com and be well. -- tycho garen

Network Upgrades #2

A Station Keeping story, by tycho garen
on 14th November 2008. (commentary)

Welcome to another installment of the Station Keeping story. This installment will be posted in three parts.

“Sorry I’m late,” Julia said as she walked quickly and abruptly into the bar. The lights weren’t on, but the door was unlocked, and David had told her to just walk in incase he was in his office or the store room. “Network drop reinforced, you said?” She asked, not wasting any time on pleasantries.

“Yes. That was the plan.” David said. ” You’re…”

“…Julia, we talked earlier,” she said quickly, unable to come up with a more witty response sooner.

“The tech systems administrator?”

“Aye, Sir.” she said goofily, showing the badge. on her shirt.

It was the first time that anyone on Hanm Centre had called him “sir,” in a situation that didn’t make his skin crawl. realized that she might not realized that he had been Navy. “Aren’t you a bit young for that. There must be 15 people on your staff or something.”

“Well, I have 20, right now, but I’m still looking for a few more. You know any Enhancers that want to clean up?” Julia retorted.

“Not yet, but I’ll keep you out here. Is it big out here? Enhancers, that is.”

“Bigger on Grish, they say, but I haven’t been there in the flesh for,” she paused and thought for a moment obviously counting in her head, “Well lets not try and count that one out. But yeah, there’s some on Hanm, but not enough. The node here is pretty big for the rim, and I just need more people to keep it working well,” Julia said. “I’ll get started?”

“Please do,” he said. He looked at Marc, who had a sly and pleasant grin. The good doctor still looked weary, but at least weary and entertained. Julia immediately found the access panel and plugged in her equipment with

David remained mazed with the speed, authority, and detail in Julia’s speech and behavior: not to mention her deft ability to deflect the conversation away from a topic that she didn’t want to talk about. He realized that despite her appearance, her subjective experience of age, that her chronological age might be a lot less. Relativity and interstellar did strange things to this society.

David found that his hands had gone back to dusting, and Marc had somehow produced a portable computer terminal and looked to be making some sort of notes, although they were both just trying to appear busy to decrease the awkwardness of not really having anything to do while the technology guru worked.

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