Space is a Hard Job

#de00ad

Alright then, hot pink. A very respectable hair color.



You are Amma Kalpana and it is exactly 6:46 AM according to your transceivemit. In an hour and twenty-nine minutes, you are slated to step on board and take your first official job as an officer on a trade ship. Of the space variety, of course, but that's obvious nowadays with how sea trade has been made redundant.

Technically, this won't be your first job, but it will be your first more-or-less independent one. You've gone half a year as an apprentice officer alongside some peers under a ship manned by a few mentors, so you already know your away around your average ship. But those trade trips were peanuts, really—they were the majority small skips across the pond to the Gilese Commons, only a few tens of lightyears away. That's just a week trip with the current hyperhop technology (which is still in its infancy, mind you, according to top scientists). Not even a month long both ways. This new trip to the Interconnected Configuration of Serpentia is apparently somewhere around a thousand lightyears long, or an estimated 7 months. That's a long time to be stuck on a ship! It sounds grueling at first, but honestly, you're pretty excited about it. You promise. It doesn't look like it now but give yourself an hour and you'll be smiling. And anyway, it pays very very well. Trade between Serpentia and Sol is booming under recent diplomatic conditions, even with the massive gap of space. It seems like astrotrade is a brand new golden age for all of universality, and the ramifications are enlightening.

You've already packed up everything you need to go. Your toothbrush, your toothpaste, a cyberlibrary with a ton of books you still need to get to, your lapceivemit, six identical versions of the officer uniform for this trading company (Paiji and Sons, Co.), and floss. Probably other things too. Notably, your transceivemit is still on your endtable, so you might not want to forget that. Now, honestly, you've got time to burn. You've got to change into your one uniform that you haven't packed up, obviously, but since transit over to the spaceport will be like five minutes, that clearly won't take up all your free time. So, what to do?

Your brain recommends "get a damn coffee, or tea, or a caffeine supplement or something."

But maybe don't go outside in your underwear.