Written for: "AI: A New Era" Story Event 2024
Thanks to Kenji Sato for editorial assistance.
AI Era: Fusion Tug Clara Solti
Vessel: FT Clara Solti
Gross Mass: 1,088 tons
Crew: 7
Length: 114 meters
Year commissioned: 2115
Main Drive: 2 x linear fusion-ion engines with beam neutralization
Max acceleration at gross: 1.83 milligravities
Registered Owner: Adew Mining (Cordillera Zaibatsu)
Navigation status: Underway
Location: 1.14 AU, sidereal 5th January, on-plane
*
To Mildred's eyes, the crew manifest reads like the cast of a reality television show; a clusterfuck of personalities. These temperaments shouldn't be penned in the same coop for a day-shift, let alone an eight-month jaunt across the inner system. Only the engineer, Rae, seemed to be delaying the voyage from turning into a cage fight.
As the ship's doctor, maintaining crew cohesion is her job, as much as the captain's, but when the company serves up shit, you tend to lose your appetite. And this crew is a recipe for interpersonal conflict. So far, the captain's only contribution to crew morale has been to fuck the cook. At fifty-one, Captain Persia Henley is nearly twice the age of the twenty-eight-year-old Zaid.
In part, Zaid is also tasked with maintaining crew morale. As cook, he doesn't need to cook anything, he only chooses the day's menu. Having a set menu for months into the future does become rather bleak, so the cook is tasked with customizing meals to suit the crew's mood, incorporating any birthdays, orbit crossings, and holidays, like Christmas or Dividend Day. A duty he'd already fumbled by neglecting the ship's passing of Sidereal New Year's, last week.
Mildred had slept with Zaid on the third night of their burn, but that memory isn't the fuel of fantasy:
the picture ceiling in her cabin glowing red with the live view of Mars, as she receives the hesitant stranger in a cautious missionary position.
Basically, just a boozy fling. That was in the same cabin she occupies now, albeit not in the 'office' configuration. She isn't normally as hasty to pair off with a new colleague. Perhaps, at forty-four years old, she wanted to prove to herself that menopause isn't messing with her libido, just yet.
Mildred is not officially a doctor. She completed her training in psychology, but cannot afford to buy the company share required to uphold such an influential title -- few could. For most citizens, a company share would need to be inherited from family, and none of Mildred's relatives are rich enough for that.
However, as the ship's doctor, and, therefore, the operator of the 'Med-bed' surgical robot, she has full access to monitor the crew's vital signs. So she knows when they are tired, stressed, sleeping, content, agitated, or calm. She can also tell when they're fucking. Heart rates and core temperatures are enough to work out who is convening with whom, but with an implanted EEG in every crew member, she can also tell who is faking their orgasm.
She opens Zaid's psychological profile on her console -- 'autism phenotype, high IQ, low EQ, some OCD, introvert, docile.' She had read all of that before she slept with him. A quick gesture at the terminal opens the metadata tab, then she drills down to an abstract file-handling field that the company psychologists have been misusing to hide their raw impressions, outside of the official record.
"Lazy. Socially clueless. Generally cheerful. Nonviolent"
Psychologists like to pretend that the company doesn't know about this data field, but that is unlikely. The company AIs knows everything happening on Cordillera networks, for protection against theft. Or communists trying to unionize the workers. Or industrial espionage. Or whatever it is that is keeping the board of directors away from their solar-yacht races this month.
Mildred already knows what's written in Captain Persia Henley's secret assessment field, because she put it there -- 'arrogant bitch.' Mildred isn't averse to sleeping with women. Indeed, she was fuck-buddies with Persia on a previous voyage -- that trip was the genesis of her two-word assessment. Persia is probably banging the cook just because she slept with him after the embarkation party. So the captain is a definite zero on her fuckability scale. Their voyage only has five months remaining, so it is unlikely she will get desperate enough to reconsider.
She flips through to Ashwin Motti's file -- 'Accountant, 26yo.' Despite his youth, the accountant position is almost as senior as captain -- more so in some aspects relating to company revenue. Accountants are automatically disliked by their crew and snidely referred to as 'commissar' for some historical reason.
The private assessment of Ashwin is only one word -- 'micromanager.' When she had first read this, she checked his last MRI to see if it was a euphemism for a physical trait. His penis looked normal, and his actions since boarding have made her conclude the assessment is entirely behavioral, unfortunately. Interplanetary crew are mostly independent loners. Having a fledgling martinet like Ashwin pulling at their strings will surely antagonize them. It's like the company had chosen this ship of fools on purpose, she frowns.
As a potential sex partner, Mildred mentally categorized Ashwin as a 'last resort,' alongside Persia. He's attractive, but not enough so to outweigh his faults.
She skips over the engineer's file, saving Rae for later consideration. She might just fuck him next, she's thinking. Partly to thank him for his stand-in leadership, but mostly because she was getting horny after two months of only 'self-comfort' and she is short of options.
Her own file is next, by seniority, although she has limited access to it. She also skips Zaid Sinden, the cook who is banging the captain, leaving the two most junior swabbies -- both women.
Blaze Klaff is a forty-one-year-old seasoned astronaut. Quite buxom, like a Lunar Gateway prostitute. Most spacers are skinny, either from their limited diet or by gene therapy. Blaze has kept her hereditary curvaceous figure -- awkward in tight spaces, but mesmerizing for the rest of the team. Who wouldn't want to fuck such a voluptuous body -- you could probably join giblets with her in Zero-G, without getting all bruised. Apart from Rae, Blaze would be her pick of the limited bunch so far.
Mildred quickly reviews last week's vitals for Blaze. Two orgasms. Once in the shower after exercise, by the look of it, and again last night, before sleep. They don't coincide with anyone else, so she was masturbating alone, like herself. Why is that?
The final crew member is a rookie named Sefina Beru. Twenty-two years old. Quite the opposite of Blaze, just by looking at the pictures on file. Her youthful beauty is hampered by her gaunt face and skinny body. As far as Mildred can see, Sefina hasn't had an orgasm since her monitoring started, over three months ago. She makes a note for herself to discuss this abstinence with her, but Mildred already has suspicions as to why.
So, apart from the capable Rae and the seasoned Blaze, the rest of the team are incompetent, inexperienced, or irritating. She can't view her own performance metrics, but it's fair to say she wouldn't be on a fusion tug, pushing shit between solar orbits, if they were particularly complimentary.
The 'shit' they are pushing this trip is four space-cans of mining supplies -- two habitable and two depressurized. There are fourteen miners aboard the 'habs,' but they're de-synced -- spinning to a lower gravity and are already quarantined -- so are 'off limits' to the flight crew of FT Clara Solti. Not only that, miners have access to premium gynoids when they want to go clapping cheeks. Mildred doubts that her forty-four-year-old body would appeal, compared to a modern South American sex robot. Unless the miner has a 'bleeder' fetish -- their slang for a real person.
Noting that she's daydreaming, her terminal chimes softly to interrupt her with a consultation request -- it's from Rae, the engineer.
"Hi Mildred. Can I meet with you when you're free? Medical. Not urgent."
She returns to review the psych file she skipped over earlier. Engineer Rae Lawson, male, forty-seven. Physically healthy. Psychologically sound. Actually, very sound mentally, even by long-haul spacer standards. Strongly independent with logical thought processes. Strong cognitive empathy. Good affective empathy. Ethical, honest, moral. Then the less favorable assessments -- apathetic, discontent, and reticent.
Interesting, Mildred thinks. Any type of empathy is unusual for most technical specialists. But with interpersonal metrics like his, he'd probably defuse crew disputes just by walking into the room. She figures the crew's loyalty will soon gravitate towards his personality, over that of the captain. Luckily for Persia, he is rated as loyal, in addition to being emotionally stable.
"Sure. I'm free right now,"
she messages back to him.
She assumes Rae has made his own assessment of the crew's dance cards and has chosen to spend some time with her, rather than Blaze. Or maybe both?
Hmm, a threesome could also work.
Clara, the ship's computer, notices Mildred is daydreaming again, with an uptick in heart rate, but no further notifications are pending.
*
FT Clara Solti is a pusher-tug, much like her historic namesake, the Mississippi towboat Clara Solti that saved eighty-five people near Osceola, in the floods of 2088. That biodiesel riverboat became a celebrity, as well as a workhorse, while the fusion-powered spacecraft is only the latter. It is one of thirty-eight currently active fusion tugs under the umbrella of Cordillera Zaibatsu.
The name Clara, without the prefix, also refers to the onboard artificial intelligence instantiation, which regulates ship functions. 'Clara-AI' is subservient to Cordillera's 'Prime' AIs, but can still make autonomous decisions when necessary. An entitlement that comes from being in the executive stratum of AIs.
The spine of the ship is an eighty-meter hollow tube, commonly called the 'borehole,' with a docking port at the forward end and the ship's engineering spaces housed aft of it.
Along the borehole are two rotating hubs, attachment points for removable cargo containers in two rings of four. Some of these are habitation modules, called 'habs,' the others are pure cargo.
Centrifugal force on the hab's upper deck is forty-five percent of Earth's gravity. So the Martians of the crew, like Rae, prefer their accommodation on that level. Point-four-five G is still stronger than they grew up with, but less oppressive than point-nine G of the lower deck.
Mildred's cabin is on the outer level. She prefers the Venus-like acceleration of the lower deck, mostly because she doesn't have to commit as much time to the gym each week, fighting osteopenia. She also has a penchant for vigorous sex and having a bunk in high-gravity helps with that. Even without sex, Rae will be getting a small workout just by visiting her cabin.
*
Mildred looks at herself. She had already changed into a two-piece gym set, preparing for exercise. Her tight-fitting sports bra and gym shorts were seamlessly woven from EcoLastane, masking little of her skin and none of her figure. She doesn't bother pulling on her flight suit, long-haul flights get pretty casual. Rae will be well acquainted with such a shabby presentation.
Then she runs her eyes over her 'office.' It's tidy. Nothing too personal is on display. With a few touches of the ambiance panel, the chameleon paint changes the walls to a mid-gray, with warm undertones, aided by a red-shift of the ceiling illuminator.
She's thinking of reverting back to the aquamarine color she had earlier because the soothing scheme is so blatant that it might just annoy Rae. People of his temperament usually resent being manipulated -- even by saccharine wall colors. Before she can decide, there's a tap on the sliding door.
