'23kpc' Chapter 35: An Insider Tour
"Fools rush in," as the saying goes.
Reminders:
(a) The complete ‘23kpc’ story so far
(b) The ‘23kpc’ Reader’s Guide
Last week:
The Pooch — Durwood — had run off belowdecks in pursuit of a cocktail’s plastic lid which Guy had thrown overboard; a few moments later, the green blinking LED on Durwood’s “remote leash” went out, and stayed that way. Which meant that Guy and Missy had effectively lost their “dog” — sending them into a mild but very confused panic.
Contacted by Matty (because he doesn’t know how to find Durwood, either), Daina and Idris invited them to the quarters of the ship’s captain, a Jincks Olderssen. It was the first time Guy met Jincks. (Because of Missy’s family history with the shipbuilding firm, she’d met him on a few social occasions pre-launch — but never with Guy.) Possibly Durwood’s disappearance, and the remote’s malfunction, were just coincidental. But could they be another symptom of whatever seemed to be going wrong with the ship’s electronics?
They all repaired to the living room. There, seeking to calm Guy and Missy’s nerves, Daina led them to the sofa to ask for some background information.
Guy continues his narration:
Chapter 35: From Inner Sanctum to Innermost: The Bridge
“Tell us about your Pooch,” Daina purrs, but I don’t understand the question.
I mean, what’s to tell? A Pooch is a Pooch is a Pooch, right? Circuits, wheels, Persona, optics, an operating system, and all the rest of whatever’s in there, covered with padding and a soft fur-like fabric. I’m no expert, but it’s “just” hardware and software. Not exactly my field, not exactly that I have a field, but...
My beloved, on the other hand, has mastered many fields.
Just for starters, and in my opinion most importantly, Missy is a ravisher of her own beloved — in psyche and spirit, without even getting into the more conventional forms of enravishment. She makes leaps of intuition and intellect which leave me gasping in envy. She routinely performs wonders in the kitchen and at the bar, reaching for a little bit of this-and-that and stirring in a little bit of the other thing en route to preparing something you will not believe your mouth has somehow done without all your life — all while carrying on a glittering conversation with a dozen people, planning an upcoming pre-dorming weekend’s festivities, and mentally inventorying the contents of her wardrobe.
She especially has mastered those relationship-y skills for whose training I myself obviously dozed off. And so she, unlike me, recognizes the true nature of Daina’s question — as an inquiry not into how Durwood works, but into its qualities, and its life with us (and vice-versa): its meaning, at least to us.
Thus it is that Missy and Daina — without repairing to another room, or even another seat — drift away out of my range. I hear Missy say something about Durwood’s independence, and our sometimes-frustrated and sometimes-laughing reactions to it. Daina’s hand leaves my leg, moves to her own lap.
My attention shifts, and that’s when I realize that Idris and Matty are standing there grinning down at me. Idris very slightly inclines his head thataway, to one side, and I stand up just as a waiter brings a tray of champagne flutes. It turns out that I do excel at something, after all: timing my readiness for the arrival of beverages. I take a couple of flutes from the tray, handing them to Missy and Daina with a mildly comic bow, and then Idris shepherds Matty and me — with our own drinks — a few feet away, to where Jincks has been standing patiently.
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