From: ender@uunet.uu.net (Pete Walsh)
Newsgroups: alt.romance.chat
Subject: Space Cadets episode 15 (sorry it's late)
Date: 10 Nov 1992 05:46:43 -0500
Organization: UUNET Technologies Inc, Falls Church, VA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: rodan.uu.net


Spaaaaaaaaaace Cadets, episode #15:  "Caught Between a ROM and a Hard Place"

{In the hours since Dohram and the Shark had winked out of this part of
space Ender had been busy.  Kathy was left to monitor the progress of Oingo
and Boingo, two quirky automatons minig fuel for the GGPlat on the surface
of Heymon III.  She'd almost protested, almost.  The intensity in Ender's
eyes told her it would be no use.  He was blind to her.  His only thoughts
seemed to be for his friend and companion, who might not even exist any
more. A G-fold is a tricky thing, and Dohram had gone without anything even
resembling the necessary safety precautions.  So Kathy sat on the bridge,
taking the hourly reports from Oingo and Boingo, while Ender sat in the
dark in his compartment, apparently doing nothing.}

==============================================================================

E [striding into Dohram's Lab]:  MROC, fire up ZWindows.

{ZWindows was something Ender toyed with in his spare time, a 3D
 application based on the old MIT XWindows protocol.  It was a real dog of
 a hack, but he wouldn't allow me to help him with it.  It was his own
 puzzle, and Ender didn't like people placing pieces in his puzzle.}

MROC:  Captain, ZWindows only about 86% functional, you said so yourself...

E:  Shut your voichip and fire it up damn you!

{Well he was insulting me again, there was still hope...  I brought up the
 primary ZTerm "window" -- more of a box actually -- around Ender.  Using
 hand movements and vocal commands he could now open other windows as
 needed.  His left hand moved with blinding speed and precision, his right
 providing key commands here and there, as if setting the tempo for some 
 virtual song.  In keeping with that theme his voice sang out strings of
 commands in syncopation with his movements.  He looked like a classical
 orchestra leader on puppet strings having a bad acid trip.}

E:  There.  That's it.

M:  What's it?  You've fired up your astronav database I can see.  Plotted
    various points and lines.  Overlayed  current emissions data, light,
    radio, and other.  I could accomplished all of that for you much
    faster you know.

E:  Yes, but you lack intuitional leaps...  and besides, your logic
    paths would never have come up with something as colossally stupid as
    this...

M:  If it's stupid why do you look so smug?

E:  Because it's the only thing that will work.  You can't fool me, I know
    you MUST have been working on a way to get your creator back safely.
    You can't have found a way or you never would have let me go through
    all of this.

M:  Correct...  for once.  So what's the plan, Captain?

E:  We can't FIND Gizmonics HQ.  Even if we could we couldn't get in.
    Even if we could get in we couldn't get OUT.  It's so simple really.
    All we have to do is get them to come to us and give us what we want,
    namely Dohram and Andrea.

M:  Glad it's so simple...  how do we do that?

E:  That's the part I haven't quite figured out yet.  But I do know where
    to start.  Lay in a course for Daedalus II.

M:  The Frontier spacestation?  I happen to know that the last time you
    were there you were killed.  Braindead for 3 minutes.  You only made it
    out because...

E:  Don't remind me.  Just lay in the course.  I hoped to never have to
    deal with her again.  But she's the most manipulative person I know.
    If anyone can pull this off, she can.

M:  At what cost?

E:  Do we have a choice?

==============================================================================

{Oingo and Boingo had brought up enough yttrium to get us to Daedalus II
 and we were on our way.}

E:  Kathy... we're going to be dealing with an old... friend of mine.  Old
    girlfriend...  first actually.

K:  I see.

E:  No, I don't think you do.  I was... AM...  passionate about her...  she
    brings my emotions to a boil.  I hate her so much...  I actually killed
    her once.  She tried to return the favour last time I was in
    Daedalus...

K:  You killed her?  Wait, then why do you speak of her in the present
    tense?  Is she dead or isn't she?

E:  Oh she was dead before I killed her.  Just a beautiful porcelain husk,
    nothing inside but spite...  and brains.  Now the husk is gone.  She's
    a ROM construct.  She never did waste anything...  She even saved
    HERSELF away for a rainy day.  In the instant her corporeal body died
    a specialized computer in her skull used the tightbeam transmitter
    she'd had woven into her rib bones to transmit the last update of her
    memories to a specially constructed computer in Daedalus, along with
    the code to wake it...  HER... up.  As I wept over her fallen body,
    so beautiful even in death, I heard her mocking laughter.  She
    broadcast a hologram back to the ship, her ship, to haunt me while she
    brought the ship back to Daedalus.  I couldn't sleep, the controls
    wouldn't respond, the autokitchen wouldn't feed me.  Three weeks I
    spent on that ship...  three long terrifying and lonely weeks.  The
    thing that gets me is...  I still love her... I hated her enough to
    kill her.  In cold blood, in fact I'd plotted it for years... I'd
    finally get the better of her, after all this time.  She still beat me.
    I love her, I hate her, I can't imagine a universe without her, I can't
    stand to live in a universe with her.  And now I have to go beg her to
    help me save my friend.

==============================================================================

{Daedalus II.  A spacestation on the fringes of known space.  Imagine a
 perfect grey cylinder 8 miles long and 2 in diameter.  Now round off the
 ends to blunt cones and blister the outside with overlapping elipsoids,
 their long axis parallel to that of the cylinder.  Highlight the grey with
 rings of blue and green and lavender.  Hollow it all out so that the outer
 skin is mere centimeters thick and spin it so it has .7 earth gravities on
 the inner side of that skin.  Along its central axis run a tube of
 shielded plasma to give a ruddy light to the interior.  Build a huge
 megalopolis inside, a city covering nearly every meter of the inner
 surface, curved around itself like old Ouroboros, the snake which swallows
 it's own tail.}

M:  They've locked the docking tractors on us.

E:  Open a hailing frequency.  Might as well get this over with...

M:  Frequency open.

E:  This is Ender, Captain of the GG Platypus.

DC:  Greetings from Daedalus Control.  You'll be docked in 3 minutes.

E:  Thank you.  Can you please place a call for me.  Code 51786.

DC:  Connecting.

51786:  Hello Ender.  What brings the fly to the web.

E:  Hello Susan.  I've come to die.  Conditionally.

S:  I'm intrigued.  Who's the piece with you?  Do I get to kill her too.

K:  No Susan, you can't kill me, though the why of it might intrigue you.
    Truth to tell you can't even kill Ender, not anymore than you already
    have.

S:  We'll see about that...  But maybe I won't have to kill him...  Killing
    you might be worse for him...

{Ender kept a brave face, but his vitals betrayed him.  Especially when
 she laughed...}

============================================================================

{What's become of Dohram?  What did Ender mean when he said he'd come to
 die?  What did Kathy mean?  What did Susan mean?  What does any of it
 mean?  Stay tuned for more...

SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCEEEEEEEEE  CCCCAAAAAAAAAAAADDDDDDDDEEEEETTTTTTSSSS!!


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