Chapter 2: The Admiral is in

January 10^th, 2279

Basil hated waiting and boredom. He had always perceived other people to be way more adjusted and patient than himself and wondered often how some could perform the same basic functions for years on end. Humans were constantly breaking new records in age, so there had to be hundreds of millions doing their part by daily repetition of menial tasks. This was even more insane considering the fact that basic needs for the human race were available in abundancy. Food, education, shelter, participation in society – ever since the human race had acquired more and more capable synthesizers, any basic atomic structure could be easily made, the only limit was the amount of energy needed. Sure, there were thousands of structures so dense, complicated and energy-intense that even milligrams of some materials demanded astronomic amounts of energy but none of these were really ever needed outside advanced technology usually reserved for the fleet. The fleet had great issues and even conflicts due to a lack of those, but this was of no concern for the average human. There absolutely was no reason at all to do a menial job, and around 30% of the human race had chosen to be artists of varying talent. But some still did. For decades on end. None of this made any sense to Basil.

The image around the tired Commander remained still for about 30 minutes, until the door opened and two ensigns pushed heavily-laden hovercarts out of the room and onto the freight platform.

Admiral Hays was just behind them. The admiral was a human, a pretty average one at that. He was one of those people so unassuming he could disappear on a theater stage. Intelligence agencies all over the known galaxy were looking for – and surgically creating ‒ this exact type of person, someone who – if you had to describe them – would look like half the corresponding population. His face looked pretty much like that picture in school books on other planets describing the typical human, a composition of millions of human faces. He clearly had come from a family that could trace its lineage back to all kinds of the former ethnicities on earth, a trait common in families that revolved around spacefaring or the fleet, also known as “fleetface”. Still, his light brown skin was marked by reddish blemishes on his nose and cheeks, indicating some poor lifestyle choices ‒ and he was clearly uninterested in having them removed. He was slightly shorter than the workers and slightly unshapely which was again pretty average for his obvious age above 80. His hair was thinning and some of the light curls and barely trimmed beard hair was turning grey. Another indication to Basil that he was a man only interested in his work and likely opposed to the clean, stylish look most officers in the fleet liked to portray, having become addicted to the myriads of beauty options advanced medicine had enabled them to.

The journalist entered the room with the admiral, exchanging in polite conversation. Basil heard them talking about an interview so he knew he was in for a long wait. Trying to not draw attention to himself, Basil rolled up his sleeves, muddled his hair a bit and pushed the metal alphabetic pins on his collar slightly out of place, pretending to scratch himself. He didn’t know what he was here for, but he knew the position he was in at this point in his career. When he was happy with his no-nonsense look interpretation, Basil twitched a bit as he was activating the timefreeze of his frontal lobe implant. A true masterpiece of human hacking, decades of research had resulted in a way for crews to simply slow down their brain to reduce the incidents of hull sickness that occurred on long journeys through the stars in claustrophobic ships. Many opponents to implants had gotten their first implant on their first deep space mission, that’s why the doctors on such missions always brought an extra supply. Basil had never understood why the target wasn’t the temporal lobe, but then again, he had never paid much attention in his medical courses at primary.

The downside to this technique was getting the brain back up to operating temperature. A classic example was now made of Basil, who missed the lieutenant’s rather soft-spoken announcement that the admiral was waiting for him several times.

- Battle stations!

The lieutenant had the same implant so she was not only aware of the commander’s condition (betrayed by minuscule pupils, almost completely disappearing in Basil’s grey irides) but also aware of the keywords that deactivated the timefreeze immediately. It even gave Basil a shot of caffeine through the medcomp to make sure he got to his station imminently and do great battle. She did, however, have to calm her workstation computer down which sent her frantic popups asking if there was an emergency. The workstation’s programmers clearly had adapted a ship’s interface for non-military use and forgotten to remove some of the prompts.

Basil’s pupils widened. He had spent the past 3 hours in a cozy, warm nothingness and a large part of his soul wanted to remain there. The annoyed face of the lieutenant piercing him with an intense gaze from her artificial eyes quickly brought all parts of his soul back into the present.

- Thank you, lieutenant.

Basil had spoken softly and slowly, trying to severely convey his thanks to her, he had run into what he considered halfwits for days on end on this trip and felt intense gratitude towards her for not being one of them.

As he stepped in front of the sigil of the League, it split and the door opened.

The admiral had had an impressive office, about twice the size of the waiting room including the coder’s workstations. He was now standing behind a massive black desk that other cultures would consider a solid foundation for a house and packing items into a transport box roughly the size of a coffin. All of the items were wrapped in the infamous bubble wrap the League had been overproducing for years. It was used for almost everything by that point, from extra padding for the stiff fleet mattresses to improvised covers for rubbing endosuits and even to remove noises stemming from expanding and shrinking hulls creaking against the hard lightweight materials that clad the inside of their ships. These were exactly the type of personal items Basil was missing from his life. He could not see them clearly through the wrap, but the sheer variety of sizes and shapes could only come from the artifacts usually dotting a high-ranking officer’s office or personal quarters.

- Have a seat, commander.

The admiral had not turned around but the reflection in his window towards the internal docking space of the station clearly showed him the hungry-looking officer. There were several chairs for Basil to choose from, all rotated in different directions so he corrected their orientation and then sat in the center chair.