//------------------------------// // Chapter 3 // Story: The Parliament of Dreams // by Wheller //------------------------------// Chapter 3 Sparky took a seat at one of the control consoles, bringing up the holographic displays in the control room, and logging herself into FutureTec’s intranet. The control room was deserted with the exception of her. There was usually someone here all hours of the day, but Sparky figured that whoever was supposed to be here was probably taking a coffee break. Sparky glanced around her, making sure the room really was empty. It was. Her console would be able to communicate with Discovery One, she could send a message to them if she liked; she could find out if they were all okay for Dula. Sparky glanced over her shoulder again, satisfied, she began to tap at the holographic display with her hooves, sliding bits of the hologram around to key in the radio transmitter. ‘Uh... Discovery One? This is Command and Control requesting a status update... eleven-forty-five Rennich Mean Time’, Sparky said, and closed out her transmission and sent it along. Even with the transmission signal being at the speed of light, it would be quite some time before she could even think of getting a response. Using projected data from Discovery One’s plotted course, the ship was about 2 astronomical units away from the planet, approximately 300,000,000 kilometres away. Her signal would take about twenty minutes to reach the ship, and then they would have to listen to it and make a response and send it back, all in all, would take about thirty minutes. Talking to someone over such long distances was a pain, and took forever. ‘Command and Control? Discovery One’. Sparky nearly jumped in her seat, Discovery One, was speaking, to her! No, she had just sent a message to them that wouldn’t be arriving for another twenty minutes. This message had to have been sent some time ago. ‘At approximately oh-three-fifty, on July 7th, year 100 of the Republic, onboard ship Virtual Intelligence detected a fault in our ship’s communication signal booster, it informed us that the signal booster was about to fail, due to this, Cosmonaut Anatoliy Leninov went outside to replace it. He brought the faulty one back in and... well we spent the last few hours examining it, but damned if we can’t find something wrong with it! The VI then recommended putting the ‘faulty’ unit back into operational use, and allowing it to fail, and then we can see what went wrong... if something goes wrong, that’s a big IF. I’m sure you see the implications of this C&C. The VI is a computer. Computers don’t do ‘ifs’. They aren’t supposed to make mistakes. If we put this thing back and it DOESN’T fail... we might have a serious problem up here. Mission Commander Ice Wind, eleven-twenty-three Rennich Mean Time’. Sparky blinked, well, at least now she knew why Discovery One had gone quiet. She began looking over the data sent in by Discovery One closely and feeding it to the project’s onsite VI for analysis. She keyed in the communications array and began her reply. ‘Uh... Discovery One? C&C, disregard my last... Uh well, it’s good to hear you guys are all right up there...’ Sparky said with a pause as the data analysis from the Command and Control VI flashed across her display, she glanced over it for a moment, discovering that the C&C VI agreed with Discovery One’s VI recommendation. ‘Uh... I fed the project’s planet side VI the data you sent... and it... uh, it agrees with your VI’s recommendation, so... uh... go ahead and take the signal booster and put it back. Keep us apprised of what happens... and... good luck up there, eleven-fifty Rennich Mean Time’. ‘Sparky!’ Someone from behind her shouted, causing her to jump out of her seat in terror and fall back on the floor. Sparky was in trouble, she knew it, and she began to panic. She was only a junior systems analyst, technically speaking, she didn’t have the proper authority to respond to the message from Discovery One. Proper procedure would have been to go get a supervisor or a senior systems analyst, and then have them read off the recommendation given by the onsite VI. Sparky’s fears, however were alleviated when the voice that had shouted at her turned to laughter, and her own fear turned to anger. ‘SHORTFUSE!’ She cried out as she rose to her hooves. ‘That is not funny!’ Sparky looked over to the door, standing in the doorway, hunched over, laughing hysterically was a cyan coated pegasus mare with a messy verdant green and purple mane, she began to wheeze and cough as she tried to get her laughing under control. ‘It’s... it’s a little funny!’ she said. Sparky growled loudly in annoyance. She knew this mare; she had the unfortunate pleasure of calling her ‘best friend’. Shortfuse Skydancer was a FutureTec software engineer, and one of the fastest non-unicorn typists that she had ever seen at twenty three words per minute. She and Sparky had been best friends since grade school; the two of them were inseparable... for some reason, because they were almost the complete opposite of each other. While Sparky was quiet, reserved, and something of a perfectionist, Shortfuse was loud, obnoxious, and incredibly lazy. She would prefer to lie back in her cubicle and take a nap then actually do the work assigned to her. That was not to say that Shortfuse was not intelligent. Sparky hated to admit it, but when it came to brains, Shortfuse had one of the best ones in the entire company, and despite the fact that she left all her work for the almost literal last minute, she always did get it done on time. What was probably the biggest difference between Sparky and Shortfuse were their lifestyles. Shortfuse was a party girl, while Sparky was more likely to spend her evenings at home reading a book, watching something educational on television, or browsing the internet. ‘Go away Shortfuse!’ Sparky snapped at her. ‘Aww... you... you’re really... mad aren’t you?’ Shortfuse asked between gasps for air. ‘I’m sorry!’ ‘Go away Shortfuse!’ Sparky repeated. ‘Okay! Okay!’ Shortfuse said as she wiped a tear from her eye. ‘Okay! I’m going! I’ll see you later tonight!’ Later tonight? What was she talking about? Sparky couldn’t help but wonder. Clearly the expression on her face communicated what she was thinking, as Shortfuse gave her a look just as strange in return. ‘Oh come on, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten what today is?’ Shortfuse asked. ‘Uhh... Thursday?’ Sparky asked. Well, it was Thursday... Thursday July 8th Year One hundred of the... Oh. ‘It’s my birthday you arse!’ Shortfuse said with a scowl, which promptly turned to a grin. ‘Jeeze, I must have scared half your brain cells to death’. ‘Get out Shortfuse!’ Sparky cried out giving her the dirtiest look she could possibly imagine. Shortfuse couldn’t help but chuckle. ‘Heh, maybe my parents should have named ME Sparky, and yours should have named YOU Shortfuse, because you’ve sure as hell got a short one! Bye Sparky! See you later tonight!’ She said, adding a patronising wave as she walked away from the room. ‘I hate you so much!’ Sparky called after her. ‘I know! It’s glorious!’ Shortfuse returned from the hallway. Sparky sighed; she picked herself back up off the floor and back to her desk. In truth, she felt guilty, how could she have forgotten about Shortfuse’s birthday? The two had only talked about what they’d be doing tonight yesterday at lunch. Her conversation with Dula must have taken up more of her mind than she thought. On the plus side, she had something positive to report to Commodore Heartstrings. While she couldn’t give out specifics, not without getting fired, she could tell Dula that the crew of Discovery One were all right, that all of the crew members were healthy and accounted for. That took a lot off her mind, and that meant a lot. Sparky looked back down at her console and looked over everything she had to do, realising that there was far more here than she had originally anticipated. She looked up at the clock on the wall, and nearly jumped again when she discovered that it read twelve hundred. She kicked herself for being stupid. All the clocks in the command and control centre were set to Rennich Mean Time, which was five hours ahead of the local time. Rennich being a town that the prime meridian passed through, in the United Kingdom of Welara where the idea of time zones was first proposed. Enough distractions! She had work to do, and it was time to get started on it. Sparky opened up her holographic interface and dove head first into her work. ... Sparky looked up from her work. She was close to being done and she had to have been making great time! She looked over at the clock to discover that it was 1959 RMT. Sparky’s eyes widened. Damn! when she got focused, she got focused! The clock struck 2000, 1500 local time, and that meant that it was time to go home. She hadn’t even taken her lunch break! Now that she was thinking about it, and looking down at her stomach, feeling it rumble in desire of food, made her glad that it was time to go home. After all, she needed to get ready to head out with Shortfuse for her birthday! Sparky closed up everything and logged out of her terminal, watching as the holographic display evaporated into the air. She pulled up her own MIP and began scrolling through it until she found her mobile phone function; she dialled the number she wished to call, setting it for audio only. The phone rang for a few moments as Sparky pulled an earpiece out of the pocket of her utility vest and bringing up and sticking it into her ear with telekinesis. Eventually the phone picked up. ‘Dula! I’ve got good news...’