I have just finished Chapter Fifteen of YOUR LITTLE SISTER.

I rewrote it seven times.

I am sure if I had not gotten to know all my online writer friends, I would have become very frustrated at about rewrite three. Now, after determining that the rewrite was CRAP, I would simply mentally shrug and start anew.

I admit, part of this was self-defense against my Blog Harem(TM). But, mostly, I am inspired by all the positive energy for writing. So I just kept at it until it made sense in context with the rest of the story and was, in the end, NOT CRAP, not even transitional. In the end, I really like Chapter Fifteen. It is creepy and disturbing and oh so filled with tension.

Thus, I love you all. I give you literary smooches.

Smooch!

So, um, who wants to read it?

A day in the life of a writer.

Oh man.

Every Wednesday you can find me over in Adventrues in Writing. Today I talk about Girls, Young Women, and Deadlines.

I always thought the orcs in Warcraft said the most interesting things when you clicked on them. Like “Zug zug!” What the heck does zug zug mean, anyway?

But I digress.

I’ve been writing.

A lot.

But not on my blog.

Cause my job is very busy.

Sometimes it has me in a tizzy.

My blog is getting frizzy.

But I still like cheese.

Actually, I have been doing some additional world-building. If I can get a breather in I will post it.

I did a bit of exposition into Dex and the people around him, continuing to world-build in the YOUR LITTLE SISTER universe.

If you have been follwoing along, this is pure world-building Anthony: Hack Writer style. It’s not a short, but it is connected to the previous Dex world-building post. If I was going to stuff this into a book, it would be half as long. Or even shorter. Right now, I have no real plot concerning Dex, although I am thinking Major Hackett will make an important appearance, not here, but later.

I love typing away without structure when world-building, seeing where the setting will take me. Here, I am expanding on the history of the YOUR LITTLE SISTER universe. The novel(s) are set eighteen years from these world-building “notes”.

***

Dex wanted boring back.

Hackett led him to a waiting room at the apex of the space station. She patted his hand, winked at him, and left without a word.

The door slid open and a young woman walked into the room. She was extraordinarily attractive, but her face was a story of fear and worry. She was wearing a brand-new uniform, with Lieutenant Stripes and a S&W G17  strapped to her thigh. Dex guessed she was just out of pre-vocational. She paused when she saw him.

Then she burst into tears and ran from the room.

“The Space Marshal will see you in about five minutes, Leftenant,” said a serene, feminine, voice in his left ear.

Hoo-boy.

Never had five minutes crawled so slowly. Finally, the door opened and a friendly voice called from inside. “Come in, Leftenant, come it.”

Dex strode across a hardwood floor of all things, his new boots clicking. The Space Marshal was standing before his high-tech desk, and Dex stopped and saluted.

Charles Olson held the command General of the Orbital and Space Force, and was primarily responsible for many of the decisions leading to the winning the war and the vanquishing of the enemy.

The new Constitution specified he was beholden to no one. Literally, he was the last in line, both rank wise and from a literal standpoint floating in space above Earth. But a single lowly Constitutional Enforcement Officer could replace him after one of their Jury Trials. Dex thought this was insane, but he had to admit, for a check-and-balance, it was a brilliant insanity.

He knew it was wrong, but he always assumed the man was older and taller. Instead, he was middle-aged, and reminded Dex of his father.

The Marshal returned his salute, briskly shook his hand (and thankfully did not kiss him) and motioned towards a couch with a loveseat in a corner. Dex took the overstuffed chair while the Marshal took the couch.

“This is an orientation, Dex, in which I impress upon my newly minted unrestricted line officers the state of O&E and where they fit into the service.”

“Yes, Sir.” So far, this wasn’t so bad. Dex was still trying to come to grips that he was an unrestricted officer, slatted for command. His two years of vocational training focused on logistics, not command. He would have to go to command school.

He hoped command school was in his future. He really did not know what he was doing. Having people salute him was unnerving.

“First off, and you’ll get all of this in training: O&E is simply a branch in the Military. And that is with a capital “M”. The Constitution does not classify sub-groups, and we probably shouldn’t either. With that said, let me display a the command structure of our entire Military force.”

The coffee table beeped and Dex realized it was a holo projector. Up popped a bunch of boxes with names, connected by lines, and as more boxes came into view, they shrank to display more data. Dex realized he was looking at a three-dimensional org chart.

The chart rotated slowly and the Marshal kept talking. “This is our current officer personnel structure, created after the Military split in three: Office of Constitutional Enforcement, Investigator, Military. Efficiency experts, command analysis and computer modeling designed this model. It flows and adjusts dynamically to standards for our society’s maximum military capabilities.  It’s a brilliant model. Except, of course, it just highlights the singular fact we’re all fucked.”

The Marshal paused and looked at Dex. Suddenly Dex had a bad feeling, one of those nebulous feelings that clawed at the bottom of the gut like an itch.

“Sir?”

“The model doesn’t lie. This is what the design is. Now let me show you the model from Year 1 to today in Year 3. Red is unfulfilled slots.”

Red boxes started appearing. And then more. And more. Suddenly half the chart was in red.

“This model is broken. We can’t use it, so we’re using something we all know sucks. Is sucking a bad thing, Dex, since we won the war? Do you think this is a consequence we should just live with?”

“I…” Dex shut his mouth. This was no easy question. Dex decided to do the ‘think aloud approach’. It could sink him, but at least he wouldn’t be sitting on the couch with his dork hanging out.

“Sir, if that is the model, based on an analysis of our global society as it exists, although new, then that is the model and to ignore it is inviting disaster. On one hand, you could argue the model is moot because there is no enemy. We waged genocide and killed them all.” Dex leaned back as he was thinking. He was getting into the rhythm of his answer.

“On the other hand, the purpose of the Military is to wage war on behalf of society to protect it from threats. Well, we already encounter a threat, and it nearly whipped us out as a species. Therefore, we need to plan for an enemy just as nasty and evil as the Unionists. Denial of logic is responsible for killing three-fifths of the planet’s population, if you add the enemy’s casualty count. We cannot deny the possibility of this happening again.”

The Marshal also leaned back and smiled warily. “Very good, Leftenant.”

Dex wasn’t finished. “In a sense, this model is a blueprint for our future society. We learned, with horrific cost, that Total War was necessary or we would cease to exist. ‘Military’ doesn’t mean much today because for several decades every free person was engaged in a war for our very existence. There was nothing political about the war. It was resist or die. So, in a sense, the model is broken.”

The Marshal cocked an eyebrow at him. “Oh, how so?”

“Can we, as a society, do anything else but wage Total War?”

Silence filled the room. Finally, the Marshal spoke. “A good question, Dex, a really good question. One I don’t have the answer, and neither does anybody else. We’ll just have to see and pray the Constitution can build a society where we can prevent something like that from ever happening again.”

Dex gave the Marshal a thin smile. “We’ll it helps there is only one Government. We’re finally united as a people.”

At horrific cost, was the qualifier that Dex did not need to add.

“Now we come to the part about you. I read your closing thesis, Current Military Expenditures and the Post-War Economy Incomes. In it, you assert corporate user fees cannot sustain the Military past the war infused Nuevo Credit reserves.”

He paused.

“Yes, Sir.”

“An accurate portrayal of finances, and you even took account post-war economy efficiency gains. Without a tax base, you assert, the Military is sustainable but would regress in capability.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Which is all true. To your credit, you did not give an opinion, one-way or the other, if this would be a good thing or not. So I am now here to ask you that very question.”

Dex did not even hesitate. “No Sir, that is bad. Really really bad,” he added, sounding just like his little sister.

“And why is that bad?”

“We belong in Space. Space won this war; our space assets will win the next war. The answer, I believe, is to somehow encourage private expansion into space beyond the Moon. We’ll just follow.”

The Marshal leaned back, looking thoughtful.

“You’re a credit to your generation, Dex. Your parents and your teachers have taught you well. But I am not here to blow nano up your ass. In a way you are right, but your model, just like the one you see floating here,” the Marshal waved a hand at the floating chart, “is broken. No fault of your own, you’re missing a key data point: Japan.”

Dex was puzzled and he was sure he looked puzzled. Japan went untouched by the ravages of war; they were a very industrial people steeped in tradition. Indeed, Dex held an enormous amount of respect for their culture; they adjusted their entire war economy without ripping their society apart like everyone else. If there was any old-style country with borders, it was Japan. They were not an anachronism; they were simply a lifeline into something normal from the past. Dex was sure without Japan, the war would be lost and the human race would have ceased to exist.

Tradition or no, the Japanese were just as enthusiastic about the new Constitution as everyone else was, so Dex didn’t get it.

“I don’t follow, Sir.”

“That’s because nobody talks about it, Dex, because it’s nobody’s business. Except ours. Because of your commission, I will give you the poop: the Japanese are funding the military through taxes. They have a 10% flat tax rate. And the entire amount, literally, goes into Military coffers.”

“But that is emphatically illegal, Sir. There is no tax authority. It is impossible to compose a government that actually collects taxes.”

“Of course. You’re going to find Constitution Enforcement Officers in Tokyo, but they aren’t going to be arresting anybody. You see, this tax is completely voluntary. The Empress of Japan, through word-of-mouth, simply asked people to make the payments. And that’s it. Everyone does. 10% of any Nuevo Credit earned in Japan simply is donated to us on a monthly basis.”

Dex mind whirled. The implications were staggering.

The Marshal grinned. “Amazing, isn’t it? Don’t think this is a pure altruistic dynamic, Leftenant. For one, what the Japanese giveth, the Japanese can taketh away. If the Empress wanted me to hop on down to the Palace and kiss her lily-white butt, I would do it without hesitation and ask her if she wanted me to wipe her ass with my tongue while I was there. There is also a bit of self-defense in their donations: they are very enamored of their wartime economy. They do not want to go through the upheaval everyone else did by going cold turkey. So they didn’t. And it’s a good thing too, because convincing a private company to make us spaceships when they economy is still adjusting to post-war reality would be an exercise in futility. We’re talking decades to get to the same point, if ever.“

Dex was thoughtful. What the Marshal just described was a centralization of power, something the newly designed government was supposed to prevent. Yet it wasn’t illegal, so, in the end, wasn’t this just part of the design of letting people do the right thing?

“Wow,” was all Dex could say, feeling stupid for saying it. He couldn’t think of anything else though. He felt punch-drunk.

“Wow indeed. But back to you, Leftenant. Your paper was widely read by everyone interested in recruiting, which, as you can see here by our handy floating model, is everybody. Let’s stuff you in this model, shall we?”

Suddenly there were blue rectangles replacing the red ones. Dozens and dozens.

“The blue represents places where we can stuff you. See all those white squares above the blue ones, connected by the wispy lines? Every single one of those wankers, and I say that with affection, made a play for you. But I cashed in two silver bullets and burnt a bridge to snag you for my greedy bastard self.”

“Why, Sir?”

“Take off your boots and come with me,” the Marshal replied, taking his off with practiced ease.

Dex did so and felt a little foolish, but the Marshal was also in stocking feet, so he mentally shrugged. They walked out of his office, and then through a door from his reception area to a small room devoid of any furnishings or fixtures. The hardwood turned to bare metal, and in the center of the floor was a simple metal disk, a big dot.

“Step on the dot, Mr. Landau, and keep your hands to your sides.”

Dex did so. He heard a whisper and looked up, and a circular hole opened above him.

And then he was floating, quickly, up. He passed through three rooms and suddenly he was in space.

His caught his breath. Literally, it looked like he was “above” the station, floating in space. There was nothing above him. Nothing to the sides. Below him, there was the station, with a small hole at the top of a tower. Between his bare feet and the hole was nothing.

The Earth loomed impossibly large. It seemed to be tugging at him, and the feeling of vertigo was almost sexual.

Dex realized he was still alive, so he decided to start breathing again. He also realized he was stationary, part of the station’s artificial gravity. There was a “down” and an “up”.

Why did I take off my boots?

Dex took a small hesitant step. His foot found a floor. It felt padded, squishy. He was standing on an invisible floor! He could not help it; he put his hands out to his sides, as if to balance. It felt as if he was walking on pillows, and he moved out twenty feet until he bumped into a wall.

He heard another whisper behind him. The Marshal was standing there, grinning.

“You’re doing a lot better than I was when I first came here.”

“What is this place?” asked Dex, almost in a whisper.

“Don’t know. This is an old US, Japanese and Russian built station. Did you know that before the war, the Japanese and Russians hated each other?”

“No Sir, I didn’t. I find that hard to swallow.”

“Heuh, well threats of annihilation of your very soul is a great catalyst to put petty national interests aside. Anyway, this room is not on the original blueprints. The people who built it are not talking. Hell, we don’t even know who the orbital workers were. All the records were lost in the Cyber War. Anyway, we think this room has some early war religious meaning concerning the alliance of Japan and Russia and their contribution to the Federation. You can line yourself up with the three towers of the station and look down to the Sea of Japan. Or something like that. “

Dex looked out at the Earth. “Well, it certainly is having an impact on me Sir. I have never in my life felt this way before.” Dex felt euphoric. The view was so intense it was like a drug.

“Good. To answer your question, this is half the reason why O&S snagged you from the recruit channels: we believe you’re a pilot. You have no qualms like the prior generation about getting implants, nor Uplinking with an AI. The fact that you are standing here, right now, without pissing your pants, and yes, that does happen, means you can adapt to what we call ‘the macro of space’. All of this is similar to what you will feel and experience when you Uplink. Your senses will expand, and you just have to be the right kind of person to do that. It’s why your placement tests and deep scan seemed like they went on forever. Uplinked pilots are both born and made, and thus hard to find.”

Dex absorbed that.

“And the other reason, Sir?”

The Marshal actually frowned, and Dex felt his heart quicken.

“That’s personal. There’s a certain kind of officer, specifically, vets, that I want on my team. It’s a thin red line. One side lays madness and despair over the horrors of war. On the other side, denial. You, my Brother, are on the razors edge.”

Suddenly Dex did not want the Marshal to continue, but the man held his gaze and Dex was helpless.

“I need the kind of young man who made the decision to kill his little sister in the heat of battle. The same young man who saw beyond the utter awfulness of that act to the long-term ramifications on what would happen if he didn’t kill her. That giving her to the enemy would be a crime beyond her murder. You made a choice where other men could not.”

Dex wanted to float away. “But I didn’t, I didn’t kill my little sister,” he whispered.

The Marshal walked right up to Dex. “Of course you didn’t. But you tried.”

How does he know how does he know how does he know?

Dex fainted.

Had an itch to write sci-fi separate from the YOUR LITTLE SISTER manuscript. So I decided to do some more world-building and see where it took me. Since I have been accused (by more than one person, I should add) of having a fascination with kissing, here’s a sci-fi kiss. We have the return of Major Hackett, and a new character, Dex. After writing this, Dex seems really fascinating. I don’t know why.

I’m digging the expanded Major Hackett though. Big time.

***

“Leftenant Landau, the Space Marshal wants to talk to you,” said the Major in a neutral, flat voice. The short, sharp-featured woman looked him up and down, as if was a fresh piece of meat. Considering he was just off an orbiter, he was. He could almost see her mentally smirking through the thin veneer of her professional blankness.

Dex froze in place. He had not been on Space Station Mitachi more than five minutes. It was his first time in space. It was his first time in uniform. Hell, he did not even know where the head is, and he had to pee.

But he wasn’t stupid. He saluted the woman, remembering his training.

Training he received only yesterday.

She saluted back, and then stuck out her hand. “Jill Hackett,” she said, her voice warming up. “I am the Marshal’s attaché and all-around gopher girl.”

Dex took her hand and instead of shaking it, she clasped his wrist and pulled him close. She actually stood on her toes and kissed him on each cheek. He hoped his surprise did not wash across his face.

His cheeks felt warm as if he was blushing, and he realized the warmth was not from embarrassment. She was a wælcyrie! He had heard of them, but never had met one until now. His brain raced with the cultural meaning of having one kiss him. It was a social greeting, but also more. They were marking you with nano riders carried on their lips. No one knew why, or if anyone did, they were not telling. Eventually, his internal nano regulator would neutralize the benign foreign nano tech.

Theoretically, at least. It was some small comfort that if the nano was malignant, his regulator would go into full neutralization mode.

He pushed this from his brain as he realized she was now smiling at him. “This way, Leftenant.”

He followed dutifully. He tried to memorize the route but gave up after five minutes. She was probably following a trail displayed in her contact lens HUD, avoiding crowds and construction in real-time, both of which seemed abundant.

Dex decided being shy was stupid. He may be still wet behind the ears, but he was a commissioned officer, newb status notwithstanding. He was being silly.

“Could we take a detour to the head, Major?”

“Of course. This way.”

Soon they were in a unisex bathroom. He made a beeline for a urinal while she disappeared into a stall.

As they were both peeing, she got chatty.

“I saw you have a combat record, Leftenant. Did you see a lot of action?”

“No ma’am. In the war, my family operated a Whisper Net Repeater in the Northern Territories. We got hit with a drop. That was the extent of my contact with the enemy.”

“I glanced at your file, personal details are sparse. You have sisters, yes?”

“Yes. Four. Three older ones and one younger one.”

She came out from the stall and they washed up next to each other.

“Four! Goodness, Landau, how did you survive? And I guess that’s why you’re not shy with having a conversation with a female while peeing.”

“I learned to hide really well,” he said grinning.

“I bet the younger one has you wrapped around her pinky.”

Dex felt the grin freeze on his face. His mother used to say to him “You be careful, Dex, that sister of yours has you wrapped around her pinky!”

Concern played across Hackett’s face. She reached across and moved his hands away from the faucet, and the water turned off. He had spaced out to the point he did not realize his hands were still under the running water.

Now Dex was embarrassed. He didn’t know much about space stations, but he knew wasting water was rude. It had to be re-filtered.

“I’m sorry, Dex. I did not mean to bring up bad memories.”

Dex sighed. “Not so much bad as—bittersweet. Is it that obvious?” Sometimes he felt he was wearing his grief from losing his parents in the war like a cloak. He dried his hands quickly, still embarrassed.

“No, no. The war has been over for only three years, you’ll spot it yourself here soon enough. We all have the odd thing that reminds us of those who are no longer with us.” Suddenly her eyes grew large and luminous. “Sometimes, the hurt just sneaks up on you and wham; it’s like a punch in the gut.”

A single tear slid down her face.

Dex felt a pang of sympathy so strong, it nearly made him shudder. Almost against his will, he reached down to her pixie-like face and brushed the tear away. Suddenly, arms were around his neck and she kissed him, a desperate kiss of mouth and tongue, and he kissed her back, just as desperately.

The door to the head opened and they suddenly looked at the entering man and woman, Corporals. The two stopped in their tracks and stared, the Major still had her arms around his neck and he realized he had a hand on her shapely butt.

The enlisted quickly recovered and snapped smart salutes. Dex just as quickly separated from Hackett and they returned the salutes.

“Major,” said the man.

“Corporal, at ease.” The Major smoothed out her uniform.

“Leftenant,” said the woman. She bit her lip and her eyes were dancing.

“Corporal,” Dex said. Suddenly he felt very foolish. He gave her a nod and left, quickly followed by the Major. As the door closed behind them, Dex did not hear laughter but he was positive that is what was going on.

“This way, Leftenant.” He could swear she was blushing.

As he followed the mysterious woman, no, the wælcyrie, Dex had to remind himself­­­—he wondered what the Space Marshal wanted of him. In the span of three days, he advertised his availability for work, received a commission, took a 12-hour orientation corpse, was deep scanned and re-assigned to Orbital and Space because of his genetic predisposition to neural implant acclimation coupled with high scores in AI interfacing. In moments, he will be meeting with the Commander of Orbital and Space. Tomorrow he will undergo surgery and then tanked for regen therapy for a month to finish growing the cyber tech and then acclimate his body to the implants.

Somehow, in the midst of all of this, he kissed the Space Marshall’s intelligence officer—a genetically engineered soldier from the war times who, technically, was not human.

Dex had to admit to himself that his future, if the present was any indication, was a big unknown to him, very different from his carefully sister-arranged life. This both terrified and elated him. Whatever tomorrow holds, it would not be boring!

Apparently, I was the only nerd who had not seen the new Star Trek movie trailers.

The movie comes out on Thing One’s birthday. The movie is PG-13. I feel he can handle it (for example, we let him watch the Lord of the Rings movies, but not Revenge of the Sith). I let him watch the trailers and he says that he would like to see it, but he doesn’t think any of his friends should go with us because of, and I quote, “inappropriate content”.

Man, Thing One is so smart some times, it’s scary.

Taking my son to the Star Trek movie. Getting misty-eyed here, folks.

Must be the allergies.

Every Wednesday you can find me at Adventures in Writing. Today I talk about paying someone to torture me.

Spring is here and I am crying.

Not because I’m sad, but because allergies suck, my eyes water. So consider this the Crying Blog. Only, um, I’m not dressed as a woman. Because that would make you laugh and I am already funny looking as it is.

Yesterday, as I was brushing my teeth before bed (mmm, mint), I was thinking of a scene where two people are talking while brushing their teeth. How would the dialog actually go? After all, these two have toothbrushes stuffed in their mouths. Why are they brushing their teeth together? Are they lovers? Married lovers? Comfortable roommates? Sisters? And what type of dialog would be important enough to have someone brush their teeth and talk at the same time? Are these sisters talking about their boyfriends? What would be the conflict? Obviously, brushing together has some type of familiarity, otherwise…

And that is when it hits me.

I am a man obsessed: obsessed by writing, by telling a story through writing.

Writing invades my thoughts constantly. Even when I talk to The Wife Unit, God help me. For example, today, there is some roof guy coming out to look at our roof. We think one of the skylights may be leaking. Because that is what skylights do in the Pacific Northwest, other than letting in cloud-filtered light in the winter.

Anyway, she’s talking to me about the roof. This is serious business. If you own your own home, the roof has to be good. Or you are screwed. But I digress. One ear is listening to The Wife Unit. But I am also thinking about a different roof problem. What if the roof guy, just minding his own business, discovers the leak is caused by a hole. A rock sized hole. And there, in the attic, is a rock.

From space. But he doesn’t know that.

He picks it up. There is a symbol on this rock. He shrugs, puts it in his pocket, and fixes the roof with a patch, some felt and three new shingles. That will be $300 ma’am, have a nice day. You sure are cute, but I see the gun safe so the husband has the potential to take any flirty banter the wrong way, so I’ll just be polite. Man I love an hour-and-a half of work for $300.

The roof guy leaves. He puts the rock in his toolkit; he assumes it came from one of the windstorms. He forgets about the rock.

But the rock hasn’t forgotten about him!

My entire day goes like this.

In a way, I feel I am blessed. For one, The Wife Unit has yet to hit me on the head with a heavy steel cooking pan (one wonders if she has thought about this, however). I could also have worse obsessions, like 17-22 year old baristas at the coffee shop. Er, wait. I could have worse obsessions, but sometimes I wish writing was less like a sneeze. Once the sneeze starts, you just gotta let it out. Otherwise, it comes across as a chocking snort that doesn’t feel good, rattles your head, and gives you a headache.

Ah-choo!

Bless you!

Thank you, I am. I really really am, and I smile everyday my fingers touch the keyboard.

From my world-building notebook for Your Little Sister. I’ve gotten in a habit of creating back-story for people who don’t make an appearance, but live, in the world.

When world-building, I start with a general idea and just start expounding. As I progress, I shift from exposition to direct storytelling. This type of world building works well for me. In no way is this a short story. More of a definition of a theme than anything else.

***

The Most Beautiful Girl in the Room sits surrounded by boys vying for her attention, at a table by the window. She wears a gun. She has been contemplating getting rid of it all day.

High school in Year 3. Only, no one calls it high school anymore. It’s finishing school. Let’s get it done, school. You need to become an adult school. Pre-vocational training school. It would be a decade before a new cultural name would emerge: prevoc. Very swanky sounding, prevoc. Prevoc is what you did before moving up to advanced training, or research. General education, well, they just called it “General”.

Half the seats in the lunchroom are empty. The prior government built the school in an earlier age, where every child could get a public education. Now school cost money, no taxes are collected to fund education,a child’s family had to fund it 100%. Some parents could not afford it, but the gist of it all was, smaller schools were more attractive. Schools like this one were going out of style in a slow, gradual death spiral of market corrections.

This one catered to military families, so it was still seeped with macro sized learning techniques. It was, after all, only three years since the war ended. Both the mother and father of the most beautiful girl in the room both served. By all accounts, they were outstanding soldiers.

They were, by the same accounts, lousy parents.

The next table over, going clockwise, is the Math Squad. This group keeps their numbers even, three boys, three girls, not in some mathematical formula of balance, but simply because they were all in relationships. Only couples obtain admittance to the Math Squad.

Two of the couples are actually doing it. The first, the founders of the club, engage in desperate sex, as if each night could be their last. As far as they know, it could. Both are war orphans. They are happy they had relatives to take them in and pay for school. These two, well, these two are broken. Perhaps being together will make one productive adult out of them.

The other two, the youngest of the group, actually, are simply fucking like mad weasels because it feels good. In twenty minutes, they will sneak to an unused classroom, and have sex right on the old teacher’s desk. Their hedonistic streak does not end there. After the last period, they go to the girls home for dinner, bringing home stacks of impressive books, pilfered from the empty class room. After dinner, they go to the girl’s room and close the door.

Her parents think she is studying. In actuality, she is engaged in more enthusiastic sex. They do it for hours.

The Math Squad only has a mild social interest in the most beautiful girl in the room. Most of it is either a small attraction, or envy. Sometimes, she has the highest senior math score.

Continuing our clockwise stroll around the immediate tables surrounding the most beautiful girl in the room, we come to another couple, sitting alone. She is very pregnant, this young woman. In three weeks, she will give birth to a baby boy, at a whopping nine pounds, three ounces. The young man sitting at the table is both her husband and the baby’s father. Legally adults, they have pre-paid for all four years of finishing school with the money they inherited from their parents’ estates.

They are the last of their line. Their parents, of course, are dead from the war. This baby matters more than most. He is a new beginning to a bad end. They will have six children in total, and eventually adopt three more.

The pregnant woman thinks the most beautiful girl in the room is quite beautiful, and she is also envious. The most beautiful girl in the room thinks the same of her. The husband carries no thoughts of the most beautiful girl in the room, other than a base attraction when they were swimming together one year.

The next table over is a teacher and three of her students. She teaches pre-war history, and these three students are very fascinated by both her age (old), and her willingness to speak frankly about many subjects, subjects now taboo to their parents. She is a good orator, and likes to talk. It is a good combination, these four. She only eats half her lunch, but by the end of the break, one student will volunteer to mow her lawn, the other to fetch groceries and the third to have the accumulator serviced on her small e-car.

None of these four have any interest in the most beautiful girl in the room. She is, quite simply, a person of no historical interest, nor one interested in history. She might as well be invisible.

Our circle of tables is almost complete. At the last table surrounding the most beautiful girl in the room, sit two boys. Rumor has it they are gay. They are not gay, they are collaborating on a software project, and it is all consuming. This project will turn into one of the very first civilian released overlays for a quantum computer, and finds classification as an AI Level 3. In only three years, they will have accumulated nearly a million Nuevo Credits. They refuse all VC money tossed in their direction, and start a computing empire stretching for hundreds of years.

These two are watching the most beautiful girl in the room. When they go home, they share fantasies about her. Sometimes silly, sometimes nasty. Right now, they are contemplating how they can get her to go to the Spring Formal with one of them.

They are too late, unfortunately. It is a lesson each will remember well. All they had to do was ask, they found out later. The most beautiful girl in the room always said yes, because hardly anyone ever asked her to dance. You could even kiss the most beautiful girl in the room, all one had to do was make a play for her rosy lips. Each would remember this lesson, and socially, they sprouted wings and flew. They never were shy again.

Back to the most beautiful girl in the room’s table. The boys at it are of no consequence. Each is flirtatious, in his own way; most are charming and even mature. But they are competing with her thoughts. She can’t help but think of her gun, and what it would mean to give it up.

Lunch is over. The most beautiful girl in the room leaves, but does not go to class. Today she has been excused post lunch. She sighs, knowing she is the faculty’s disappointment, and heads to the Principal’s Office.

Principal Vernon is expecting her. Inside the small office with him is a short woman dressed in a distinctive, but unrecognizable, uniform. The most beautiful girl in the room sighs again, and sits without asking.

“Sandra, I want you to meet Major Hackett of O&S.”

Sandy raises an eyebrow, and shakes the woman’s hand to be polite. Whatever Vernon is doing, however, she does not want to be a part of, no sir. She frowns, unfastens her holster, and slides it across the desk.

“No,” she says simply.

His eyes flash with anger, actual anger. He pushes the holster back.

“Don’t give me this bullshit, Sandra. It’s your pistol now. You’ve worn it for a month now, it’s yours.”

“Mr. Vernon! Don’t you cuss at me!”

“Ha! See Sandra, you’re an adult. You have been for an entire year. You haven’t Declared because you’re saddled with the apathy from your fucking parents and you’ve been wearing it like some kind of mantle.  Hell, I’ve been more of a parent to you for the last four years then either one of those two sloths, and I am here to tell you to knock this shit off. We’re all tired of it.”

Sandy could not believe what she had heard. Vernon never cussed. Until now, she had never even heard him say “darn”. She slumped in her chair. She contemplated crying, but couldn’t muster the tears. Maybe he was right; maybe she wasn’t a girl anymore if being cussed at by the Principal did not make her cry.

“But what would I do?” The words are out of her mouth before she realizes perhaps this is why Major Hackett is here. She looks at the woman.

“If you Declare, I have a job for you. Briefly: you fit a profile for our advanced piloting program; you’ll start right after a month of space acclamation, followed by on the job training and formal instruction, which will last two years. It will be a very intense two years, but Day One you will be an officer with a commission. “

“Piloting?” Sandra was confused. She did not even have a car. She narrowed her eyes. “Profile? Who gave you a profile of me?” She put her jumbled thoughts together and turned to face Vernon. “You had no right to violate my privacy!”

“Right? Right? Adults have rights. You, Sandra, are merely a child.”

Oh well played, sir, well played. She felt as if the Principal had just slapped her across the face. She slumped further in her chair. By rights, she should call her father and have him give the Principal what for.

If he wasn’t drunk.

And fucking the neighbor girl.

Her mother of course, was more useless. Sandy should have been the daughter. Instead, to her mother, she was simply sister to the brother who died when she was merely one month old. Slain by the enemy. In a bad way.

“And what does my profile say?” she asked the Major. It came out bitter.

“It says many things. But the gist is: institutions to you are familiar, you have above average marks, you test well under stress, you are attractive and your nervous system is well suited to implants for the neural interfaces.”

Sandra’s mind whirled. She wanted to ask what being attractive had to do with anything, but this is not what came to the front of her mind. “Would I be anywhere near my parents’ chain of command?”

“Absolutely not. If you say yes, in twenty minutes you will actually outrank your parents.”

A chill went down Sandra’s spine. Oh they had her. They had her now.

She looked at Vernon. He started smiling. She contemplated punching him in the nose. She stood up, and put her pistol back on.

“Do I get a starting bonus?”

The Major actually paused. “Yes. Yes, you do.”

She looked at Vernon again. “I want it to be the same as his finding fee.”

Now the Major flinched. It was small, but noticeable.

“Ah, yes. Yes, I can authorize that.”

The grin threatened to split Vernon’s face.

It took ten minutes to walk to County Safety. They were expecting her (damn them all), and in three more minutes, she was an Adult. Her very first contract was accepting an Officer’s Commission for Orbital and Space. It took eight minutes to receive verification and for the major to swear her in.

The Major was driving her to her parents’ house, no longer her house, in a rental e-car.

“Major, what does being attractive have to do with anything?”

“Good question, Leftenant. You’ve been matched to an AI. Level 1. She was very specific. She said, and I quote, ‘If I’m going to Uplink with a stinky human, make it a woman with some brains and nice, perky boobs’.”

Sandra burst out laughing. The Major gave her a side-glance.

“You are not offended?”

“Are you kidding? That’s funny as hell.” Sandy was still getting used her ‘Uplink to an AI’ future, but it was funny. Everything seemed almost like a dream, and she would wake up only to find her same apathetic life with her same apathetic family.

Major Hackett grinned. “Damn it all if the profile matchup actually worked.”

They pulled up to Sandra’s house. Suddenly she was nervous. But something again was nagging at her brain.

“Ma’am, is this a ship left over from the war?”

“Negative, Leftenant. This is not an orbiter. It is an armed corvette, with a landing shuttle and everything. It can go planet side, but it is built for space duties.”

“Space? Why do we need armed space ships?”

“Well now, you’re smarter than you look, Leftenant,” said Hackett as she got out of the car.

Whoa. All thoughts about a stressful meeting with her parents were now gone.

What’s going on, and what did I get myself into? thought the most beautiful girl in the room.