rix_scaedu

This is brought to you by thnidu and the number six. Special thanks to thnidu because I had already written words to this and forgotten that I hadn't posted them. It follows on from Voted With Her Feet.

“Yes, two separate lines carrying the Pilot complex as a recessive, and neither breeding with another such line and throwing up a Pilot in all the generations since the Meddlers manipulated us seems unlikely,” mused Thornben Rorge.

“I believe it depends very much on how many people carry the Pilot complex,” pointed out Taggery, “but I agree it’s unlikely that you two are the first two Navigators carrying the Pilot complex to get married and have children. There should definitely have been more people like me.”

“Assuming that there were,” asked Tellin, “what happened to them?”

“I assume they took the jobs that nepotism offered them,” answered Taggery, “or simply walked away and never came back. Either way, there’s nothing to talk about from the Navigators’ point of view.”

“You never thought that they might have been – disposed of?” Tellin asked the question delicately. “One hears about how some manipulated communities deal with their aberrants…”

“The Foche warrior caste, you mean?” Taggery asked her counter question brightly. “No, that never occurred to me. The Foche reaction to aberration is coded into their gene complex and it only kicks in when an individual has an aberrant version. It’s triggered because the aberrant individual actually stinks to non-aberrant Foche.” She added off-handedly, “Apparently the Meddlers found it easier to engineer that complex to detect and destroy aberrant versions of itself than to correct the instability that produces the aberrants in the first place.”

“So, you know that by observation, do you?” Her father sounded amused.

“No. They’ve got a massive Meddler archive at Yorli and I started doing a history major before I was identified as a Pilot. Originally I thought I might come back here and teach at the Astrolabe.” She smiled. “Then life happened. I finished my degree by correspondence from on board ship.”

“You get that much downtime?” Her father raised an eyebrow at her.

“I have duties that occupy me for my shifts but piloting doesn’t consume your waking hours the way navigation does and it’s not like I was doing a full course load. Besides, piloting is all about what happens in the wormhole. They think that’s why the Meddlers were trying to make the two gene complexes co-dominant, so one person would do both jobs.”

“Why didn’t they achieve that?” Tellin looked puzzled. “They pulled off everything they set their minds to, or so I was taught.”

Their father looked around before saying, “That’s a bit of an exaggeration, Tellin, despite what the tradionalists tell us.”

“I suspect they would have achieved it, eventually,” acknowledged Taggery, “but the Pilots were still in testing and refinement when the Meddlers were overthrown. Essentially, we’re permanently stuck at beta whilst also being in production. Navigators, on the other hand, are definitely full production models.”

Tellin visibly preened.

“I have no idea how they planned to reconcile the personality differences though,” added Taggery.

“Personality differences?” Her father leaned forward, interested.

“Yes, I mean Navigators are meticulous, studious and, of course and although it’s not a personality trait, good at maths.” Taggery indicated her brother and father with her hands. “Pilots on the other hand, are all risk takers. A good adrenalin rush can make our day. I mean, it turns out the real reason I like terminal velocity cabinets so much is that it’s the closest you can get to the feel of diving through a worm hole without the right sort of ship and while staying in this dimension.”

“Ah,” said her father. “Is that actually about adrenaline or is it something else?”

I wrote this to lilfluff's prompt and it follows on from Trick or Treat which is pretty much concurrent with or slightly after Complications on Halloween.

By the time Elvira Madden was out of her car and locking it, handbag over her shoulder, she could hear the car coming up the driveway. It was still a distance off but she could hear its engine purring along. Whoever was in it wasn’t in a hurry to get to the house and she should have been able to see the car’s headlights but they weren’t being used.. As she walked around her car to join the two Grimolochins she heard the approaching engine stop, then, a few seconds later, the house lights went off.

“Right, everyone into the house,” snapped Tybalt Grimolochin, “and that includes you two,” he added to the cats. Surprisingly the cats immediately stood up and went inside. Tybalt ushered Elvira and his son Joe inside and locked the door behind them. “Now,” he said grimly, “we make sure all the other doors, the windows and the cat flaps are locked.”

Elvira asked, “Shouldn’t we call the police?”

“We probably should,” agreed Tybalt grimly, “but given how well my other calls for help have gone tonight, I’d be surprised if I got through or got a useful response.”

“We should at least try,” said Elvira. A thought occurred to her, “Perhaps I should try? The people who won’t or can’t answer you might answer me.”

“That may well be worth trying,” Tybalt admitted. “When we’ve checked that everything’s locked, I’ll take you to the phone.”

“They might have cut that wire too,” pointed out Elvira. “Perhaps I should use my mobile?”

The Library of Rasimon was the leading institute of learning and knowledge in the known, civilized world. In the past Sergeant Privon had found that watchmen were only tolerated inside its hallowed walls as long as they kept their hands behind their backs and didn’t touch anything. Their only advantage over new students was that they could carry weapons and the students couldn’t – unless the students were Mevari or Tronanian, of course. Today though Sergeant Privon had not just been grudgingly admitted but summoned.

It would have been impolite and possibly unwise to suggest that the Head Librarian, Erasmus Ptolemies, was in a flap but if it’d been anyone else, that would have been the phrase.

“The entire section’s been cleaned out,” he’d said agitatedly for the third time. “Everything we had on the Iatran War of Succession is gone. Everything! We had the biggest collection of original, contemporary commentaries anywhere…”

“So, who would want these books?” If anyone knew the answer to that, it would be the Head Librarian.

“A collector or a scholar, I suppose. Some of the volumes are almost a thousand years old.” Ptolemies almost wrung his hands. “I can’t think of anyone who’d want the entire section and only that section. Although,” he hesitated for a moment, “there was a rather odd letter from the Abbot of Deerfolme a few weeks ago asking if we’d been offered any volumes on the Sassenarn Rebellion – that’s about the same period. And then there’s this.” He pointed at the stiff, folded paper on the otherwise empty shelf. “We have no idea what it means.”

The red characters read, “Delmanire 6 was here.”

I wrote this in response to kunama_wolf's prompt and it went a little over word count. It follows on from Piece of Cake 2.

“So, your new friend,” prompted Koblek’s wife encouragingly.

“He’s the uncle of a couple of kids in Slivena’s year,” Koblek was telling the absolute truth at this point, which would make it easier to slip the lies in later, “and we got talking at the school gate. We’ve had coffee a few times and now he’s invited us to a barbecue at his place on Sunday.”

“That sounds nice,” Sophoa Brankovar nodded appreciatively. “Would we be the only guests?”

“No, his sisters and their families are coming so there’ll be those two kids from Slivena’s year plus a few others.” He smiled at her warmly over his coffee.

“I think we should go,” Sophoa said firmly. “Our social life should be more than just my family.”

“I’ll give Droukha a call and let him know we’re coming.” He pulled out his phone and made a call before putting the phone up to his ear. “Hi, Droukha? It’s Koblek here. Look, I’ve spoken to my wife and we’d love to come on Saturday. What time should we be there? Five? Great! What should we bring? Salad our kids will eat, we can do that. We’ll see you then. Yes, I’ve got the address from when you asked me. Bye!” He ended the call.

“Salad our kids will eat? Sounds like he’s been around children a bit, doesn’t it?” Sophoa smiled and then the land line beside her rang. “I’ll get this.” She picked it up and her expression changed to distaste. “Galena! No, we can’t look after your kids Saturday night, we’re going out ourselves. No, we can’t cancel. Well, you should have thought of that when you bought the tickets and not left it to the last minute to find a babysitter, shouldn’t you?” She held the phone away from her ear, then when the person on the other end stopped speaking brought the phone back to her ear and replied, “And that’s supposed to change my mind? Galena, if the local teens won’t babysit for you then maybe other people aren’t the problem – you should look at that. Bye!” She hung up the phone deliberately and without slamming. “I love your friend Droukha, sight unseen.”

I wrote this to kelkyag's prompt. It follows on from Logic Fail (2).

A waiter coughed quietly behind the woman in the apricot dress, the one who objected to Mayin ‘flirting’ with a member of their former enemy. “Will madam be rejoining her own party or leaving now?” He asked the question in a polite and neutral tone.

Diverted, the woman turned to look at him and said, “I beg your pardon?”

“After the scene madam has made in confronting another customer, madam has a choice: either return to her own party and be circumspect for the rest of the evening or; leave. Right now.” The waiter positively loomed at the woman in apricot, and Mayin recognised him – Rigo, another former member of her unit, had once spent six weeks undercover as a steward in an enemy officers’ mess.

“You can’t talk to me like that!” The woman bridled in indignation.

“Madam,” Rigo’s voice remained calm, “it is my job to speak to you like that and, if you refuse or are unable to choose one of the options I’ve presented, it becomes my task to remove you from the premises.” His expression remained almost neutral as he added, “With all due discretion, of course.”

“I’ll scream.” There was a rising pitch to her voice.

“Madam can attempt to scream, but the manager feels that you have done enough damage to the evening’s ambience already.” Rigo flexed his shoulders ever so slightly.

“But she-,”

“Is an old friend of mine and if he hurts her, I will kill him.” Rigo smiled. “I promise.”

I wrote this to aldersprig's first prompt.

Ritorian had been settled as part of Firilis’ defensive diaspora and it had begun with all the advantages that Firilis had given the other colonies. Then one important piece of terraforming equipment had failed. Attempting to repair it had killed two of the colony’s guides and their absence plus the inability to use the equipment that had killed them saw administration of the colony and its development program out of human hands by the time the third generation of colonists was reaching maturity.

The older two generations told them that they were living in labour camps, not towns, and that was certainly true. Participation in assigned work details was enforced by the Central Unit and its security drones, as was non-participation on days when work details had not been assigned. Breeding protocols were certainly in place but, generally, did not need to be actively enforced. Progress remained on track and every so often the Central Unit conducted surveys.

“What does this mean?” Sutoi looked up from the electronic pad he’d been given to work on. “Do you associate a colour or colours with the summer festival? If so, what?”

“I didn’t get that one,” replieded Garmedua. “I’ve got ‘Are you interested in making images for your own pleasure and/or the pleasure of others? If so, what type of images are you interested in? If you are uncertain as to your answer for any of these questions, would you be interested in undertaking a series of sanctioned introductory classes in work hours?’ What’s that about?”

The Central Unit local module interrupted with, “Human psychological maintenance for optimal physical and social functioning requires dynamic adjustment to ongoing systems. All questions are designed to elicit responses that will allow the design of systems to produce best case outcomes for the Colonial Development Program and for the colonists. Please resume answering questions. Please answer all questions presented to you. Thank you.”