Derek was in the unfinished space that would be his own personal assigned crew quarters when all was said and done; practically on autopilot as his mechanical body gently wedged the panel a few more milimeters, allowing it to lock into place. It was a surprisingly generous 4x4 meter space; but then, the Outreach ships were bigger than anything humanity had built before, and had plenty of space to spare. Everything had its own exact space it needed to go. Furniture would be able to reposition; but the walls, the doors... everything needed to be just so. If a hole passed through the ship, the gel inside this wall needed to be able to seal off the wall. The door; which doubled as an airlock; needed to seal properly.


    Right now, it was a box. A holy box, with gaps for the fitting of wiring and piping in progress. For Derek, it was mind-numbing, easy work, of the sort he hadn''t done for years. It occupied his hands while he read notes about the Hyperdrive. He was on a fairly interesting passage, apparently penned by the Survivor himself, about the two types of FTL travel known to exist, when he head a knock at the door; or, rather, the doorframe. There was no door, yet. He tapped his Icon, bringing up his checklist.


    Training Checklist for Head Navigation Officer Slot:


    [Learn Navigation Functions: 101%]


    [Learn Hyperdrive Functions: 89%]


    [Learn Fusion Torch Functions: 78%]


    [Learn Basic-level functions, all positions: 93%]


    [Build Own Quarters: 55%]


    [Optional: Learn Terraforming Functions: 163%][Complete]


    [Optional: Learn Hypercannon Functions: 42%]


    [Optional: Learn Missile and Point Defense Functions: 36%]


    [Optional: Learn full-level functions, all positions: 43%]


    [Optional: Furnish Own Quarters: 0%]


    He shut it down, and looked over at his door; to see the slow-moving image of Shiraki; a relatively short asian man of an age he simply couldn''t guess. Either he was terrible at it, or the man had tweaked his overlay to make it difficult. He saw a line floating over his Icon;


    [Sync Timeframes] [Yes][No]


    He tapped [Yes], and felt a sudden lurch. Gravity wasn''t weaker while time was slow; it just felt like it. Instead of slowly drifting towards the ground, a tool would slam down abruptly. Fortunately, nothing heavy was in motion; other than his own body.


    Shiraki studied him for a few seconds as he almost fell on his ass, carefully balancing himself as he settled back into a standing position. "The captain tells me you''re going to be my boss for the rest of the trip. Khaleesi is currently spelling me on Navigation. I was a bit pissed at first. I spent three years in the academy, and had been on a destroyer for six months before it all ended. We were dodging around and trading shots with the Enemy... for about a minute and a half, before we were overwhelmed. Then I saw the guidelines he sent you."


    He crossed his arms. "You had more orbital mechanics and navigation training before you died than I do now. He basically mandated you be dramatically better than me to get the slot. Why the hell weren''t you in the navy? There were millions of slots open that last year. We were expanding like crazy."


    Derek froze for a moment. If not for the slow swirling of his Icon, Shiraki might have taken him for being out of sync. "I... didn''t make the cut. I went to the academy with my ex, and all of my friends, but... training incident. I had a brain defect, some sort of neurological disorder... I was fine with real gravity, and spin. But the artificial stuff? I had... episodes. They said hyperspace would probably do the same thing."


    A vision spun through his head. Blood. Screaming. One of his classmate''s face in his hands, the steady meaty thunk of flesh against metal, the cracking of bone. Everything going red. And then black.


    "The first time was on the shuttle into orbit. They thought it was just a fight between a couple of classmates that went a bit too far. I''d passed the sims, was on track for officer training, they didn''t want to waste all that time; after all, medical technology had both of us up and moving in days, and its like you said... millions of slots to fill. The second one... was worse. Only a few dozen people like it ever showed up... and one was my uncle. I didn''t find out until the discharge hearing. Me and my family, grounded. Permanently."


    Shiraki gave a slow nod. "A genetic defect. Something they couldn''t fix. And something that doesn''t really matter for a robot body. Is that gonna be a problem when we start getting real bodies?"Stolen story; please report.


    Derek blinked. "I... hope not. Hadn''t really thought about it yet."


    "Maybe you should take a break. Go talk to Sheila. Right now she''s just sorting through the database for the captain, finding the right minds to upload for positions, but we aren''t slated to add more crew until the 13 is finished, and we start in on her escorts. Still." He extended a hand.


    Derek reached out and took it, giving a firm squeeze. Perhaps a bit too firm; he heard the faint screech of metal before he abruptly relaxed his grip.


    Shiraki chuckled. "I''m sure it won''t be a big deal. Maybe they couldn''t fix it when you were alive, but this time they''ll get to build your body from the ground up. None of it should be a problem."


    ***


    The robot bay was a bit creepy, with or without the overlay. On the Earthforge ships from his sims, this didn''t exist; it was the medical bay, where the fake crew would be treated for their fake injuries, after fighting some equally fake aliens trying to stop him from terraforming their world. There was a real medical bay in the deck that was most different from the sim; the cloning bay. In the sim, if your character ''died'', you''d ''respawn'' as a clone. Actual defeats were rare; scores were about how well you did at making the star system ready for colonization, and there weren''t even threats in most of them.


    Dr, Sheila McCloud was another redhead; one whose overlay, unlike those of the bulk of the crew, actually showed what was likely her true original body; a motherly figure in her mid-50s, with a blend of red and grey hair, and a less-than-perfect figure, but a firm, steady stride as she walked among the tables, studying the information only she could see about the robots in mid-activation.


    She raised a hand as Derek entered. "Hold. One of our construction engineers managed to completely wreck himself and his team securing the net on the outer shell, and I''m having to load the lot of them in new bodies."


    "A... net on the outer shell?"


    "You''ll have to ask him. I''ve been underclocking when I haven''t been needed. I''m a cybernetics expert, not a starship engineer."


    For the next few minutes, Derek would wait; not able to see just what was going on, to him it just looked like she was standing in place, making tiny twitching movements with her fingers. He drifted off in place... and even started to absently read another passage on the influence of black holes on hyperspace.. before the three men abruptly sat up.


    It looked strange, with the overlay in place. One moment, three identical skeletal machines lay there. The next... three men; drastically different in skin tone, height, build, everything... were rising up in their place.


    The first one off the table, an impressively stout asian figure that Derek guessed might be chinese, gave a long sigh. "Again!? Seriously? Wait. Is this the body I was in the first time?"


    Dr. McCloud scowled. "Precisely. It took subjective days to get it back to one hundred percent. And from what I hear I won''t be doing that to the replacement at all?"


    "Well. Yeah. I shut down and uploaded just before I shoved these two back towards the ship, and, well. That body is somewhere out in hyperspace."


    She sighed. "Each computer core uses elements that we have a very limited supply of here. We can afford to lose rocks more than bots."


    Derek blinked. "Wait. So thats why you need a net? To keep the rock from escaping into hyperspace?"


    The man glanced over at Derek. "Oh. The Earthforge guy.... Thompson, right?"


    At Derek''s nod, he shrugged. "Essentially. We''re about to start breaking through, and the rock is gonna completely collapse soon. This whole thing is packed full of juicy bits of iron, gold, iridium... if I knew that outer shell was all iron, I''d just let it go, we''ve got kilotons of it. But maybe, just maybe, I can find a few more grams of the good stuff."


    He pats Derek on the shoulder as he heads for the door. "Enough of a break. Lets get back out there. As soon as this is done, we can get back to the fun part and making ships."


    As the other two men followed, Derek could hear one of them mutter.. "..As soon as we start on the ships you''ll be trying to move on to something else. Crazy old man."


    He heard the footsteps rapidly fade as they moved out of the room, heading for whatever airlock they were working at. Two badly crushed robots were being dragged into the room by another of the construction engineers. "Here we go, doc. Almost lost two of them entirely, but the other guy pushed em back so we could grab em with a mag line."


    Derek helped the two load the broken machines onto empty tables; tables which, now that he had a closer look, were covered in various implements; tiny robotic tendrils, charging cables, spouts for chemicals of various descriptors. Once the second machine was in place, and the engineer was on his way out, Dr. McCloud immediately turned to one of them, assessing the damage.


    "So, what is it that brought you in here? I was under the impression you were fast-forwarding your way into officer-hood."


    "Oh, thats easy enough. Back when I was alive.."


    "You are alive. Just... not organic. At the moment."


    "That''s actually what I wanted to know about. The becoming organic bit. I had a fairly.... irritating neurological condition when I was.. organic. When we clone me so I can... be organic again, will we be able to fix that problem?"


    Dr. McCloud''s response would, of course, fill Derek with dismay. "Of course not. Why would we clone you a new body to begin with?"