Pleasewrap

Chapter 1 – A Present for a Dunce The holiday season at the Academy was its typical mix of enjoyment and depression. The festivities planned always seemed to polarize the cadets, either looking forward to the parties, dances, and rest from the typical working schedule (which was grueling to be sure); or remembering family, friends, and lovers who were now far away. The fact that the minimum distance to one of the latter was over 100 million miles didn’t help many of the cadets. Throw in the average of over 22 light-years, and the depressed side wasn’t a surprise to anyone. ...

Miranda sat at her computer, scanning the data on machine performance and looking for the tell-tale signs of impending issues. After a long day of programming, database maintenance, and control system recalibration, she always performed this check to help identify the machines that might break down in the next day or two. If she found anything, she’d schedule preventative maintenance to avoid the issue. “Preventative maintenance,” she thought to herself. “I could use some of that.” ...

Part I Flying is just not fun. The security lines, the delays due to weather/crew/the airlines just hating you and wanting to screw up your day even more. It’s just not fun. And sadly, I do way too damned much of it. I own my own company (web-based merchant), and it seems like I’m always on the road for a meeting, to check out a new supplier, to try to find a bank that understands that I’m not going to put myself out of business meeting their credit terms. So over the past 5 years, I’ve racked up better than 100K miles in the air each and every year. ...