This is an edited rewrite of the first publication of this story by the same title. Readers' comments were spot on (thank you to everyone who commented) about the difficulty of following which voice each paragraph was written in that disrupted the flow. This rewrite includes voice clues according to the key that follows this paragraph, and also includes enriched details that expands the backstory and scenes. All comments are welcome.
This key is to clue the voice change that continues until the next voice change:
=N= is for narration voice
o/o is for male character
-/v\- is for female character
A little visual clue perhaps and hope you enjoy your read, please leave a comment.
-/v\-
I look up at Barrett and hope nothing has changed now I am aware of my boob pressing into his chest. He doesn't seem to have noticed so I am not about to move away at all. His demeanor has a subtle change while he is looking in the distance. It is like his eyes are not fixed on anything, that look someone has when they are listening to someone, perhaps listening to a conversation. That would be normal except for the fact that besides he and me there is nobody around, just the two of us in the dark underneath the starry night sky. And the Moon of course, the moonlight is making everywhere look like it is glowing in a soft blue-white light.
Barrett is a strange man by how different his mannerisms are from people I have been with before. Different yes but I have no sense of danger or dread and instead I have a curiosity and an intrigue with no sense of worry. It is a comfort I have only felt when being with family before, yet I have known Barrett for less than a couple hours. Our hands are still clasped together and I sense no change in the pressure of his hand and his fingers on mine nor any other movement of his hand holding mine.
Then just as suddenly as he had been whisked away to the unheard conversation, he is back to looking at me as if the conversation he had been listening to ended. It is so difficult to see anything in the dim glow of light but I can see and feel his eyes are on me again. And by feel I mean it feels like he is looking directly into my heart. I cannot take my eyes off him and I don't care if I am looking at him way too long because he is doing exactly the same thing to me. I know fully well how my mother always told me to be wary of being swept off my feet by a stranger.
Technically Barrett is a stranger like she warned me about because I really don't know anything about him. But if her concern was a worry that I would be swept away to experience the thrill of adventure in the rarest of pure love, then I am at a great risk of becoming a disappointment to her. I feel an attraction to Barrett stronger than any feeling I have ever felt before. He smells so good and I'm guessing it is just his natural body scent I keep breathing in deeply.
My heart is beating quickly and my mind is going straight into my favorite fantasies and past daydreams. I know I should remain calm and keep my mind clear as best as I can. Bad things happen to good girls in situations like this and some of them are never heard from again, or worse, found sometime later having suffered a tragic death. My daydreaming has never been perilous but something always happens to me that is very naughty and very exciting, and those naughty and exciting things happen to me as the good girl I am. They have me believing that good girls can get into compromising and erotic situations while still remaining a good girl. A good girl can also be a bad girl for the right man and I have never before met the right man but I am sure I am leaning against the one I want now.
o/o
I look at the beauty who is leaning her body into mine and holding my hand. I refocus on her in the pale blue-white moonlight and notice she is looking at me as if she can read my mind. I have seen this kind of look from a woman before and before it was unsettling but somehow with Noel it is all new and different and intriguing. The Datastream information arrives and tells me that her eyes hold the key and reveal evidence that her genetics include Avalonian tracers.
That information changes all prospects for Noel. Prospects of whether she could be a suitable partner to would she choose to be my lifetime partner. That change in perspective is an epic paradigm shift I had not expected and such a quick turn of event has made our meeting tonight feel more like a prearranged appointment than mere happenstance.
The situation has quickly shifted from amazement at meeting her tonight as a delightful and attractive woman to considering how much time would be needed before I could ask her for a decision that she would need to make. To get to that point would of course require me to move the discussion to where I could give her a choice that would require her decision. A choice that would forever change her life.
I can already feel how I want to trust her. I can feel it deep within me. A focusing fact that she is genetically predisposed to stepping off planet with me. First and foremost though is the matter of trust. I have only been aware of Noel's existence for a couple of hours and there is a lot of ground yet to cover before any hint of her joining my crew can be made.
Trust is absolutely essential for me as Captain when choosing a member to join my crew. The Captain chooses first who should have the opportunity to join the crew and then a two-way consideration begins first with the prospective crew presented with the opportunity and then second the potential crew member needs make their own decision. The crew must be absolutely certain the Captain is worthy of their absolute trust so that when commands are given they are already committed to following orders implicitly, without questioning, delay or doubt.
=N=
Documented in the historical archives are accounts of Captains who fell prey to individuals who influenced them for emotionally biased decisions to become crew, only to discover later the crew had ulterior motives and had in fact chosen them and their ship before they met. Nothing untoward was detected in meetings archived in Captain's logs entries or Command Dispositions nor at any time before the individual was invited to become crew. In each case discovery of subterfuge happened later with a commonality of the crew had employed manipulating behaviors and techniques to get aboard ship.
Archives show these events happened without a preference to either the Captain's gender or the type of starship, and no trends have been discovered to correlate motivations beyond avarice for putting the safety of all involved into jeopardy. Upon recognizing the perpetrator's motives, the universal Captain's decision has been to protect the ship, to restore the sense of social balance, and to reestablish the harmony essential for everyone involved in extended space travel. What is considered the practical decision is a Phased Transport for the malevolent crew from Point to Oblivion.
Examples of these events are core curriculum at the Academy to illustrate to what level a situation must reach for this action to be taken as appropriate. Appropriate as an action of a magnitude equal to the threat and when properly documented justifies Point to Oblivion Phased Transport to physically offload the perpetrator's rogue spirit from the ship. Because it involves the destruction of the spirit's physical manifestation, it requires the highest level discernment of all Command decisions.
Barrett's primary instructor had taken care to use the most extreme examples to motivate his students. He emphasized the benefit of Phased Transport to offload the spirit as a sensationless separation of the spirit from the physical body. He also cautioned it would require a calculated deceit on the part of the Captain to command the starship to perform an act that goes against the ship's fundamental programming. An act that can only be commanded when the ship's core processor is in harmony with all prior command decisions, emphasizing the importance of consistent and competent leadership that builds credibility and cohesion between a sentient and a processor-cortex.
The instructor's key takeaway point was to develop a seamless coordination with the ship's artificial intelligence to make second nature the mental coordination each student should have with their ship's core processor from its earliest processor-cortex development. This part of the curriculum is used to promote a concerted mental coordination that begins during preparatory coursework for the student's neural communicator implant procedure at the beginning of their 13th year.
The implant is made at the same time the core processor is receiving its initial programming at the Farpoint Shipyard's Artificial Intelligence Systems Division. The Captain is then tapped into the communication stream through the core processor halo of its supporting architecture that will later become the central operating system for the Captain's DS Cruiser.