I like Noriko. Some people are bothered by everything -- nothing that happens makes them happy -- but most people are bothered by at least one or two things. Noriko is one of those rare people who isn't bothered by anything. Not like Evo, who glides by on optimism and an inflated sense of self-worth, Noriko is someone who's biggest concern is that right at this moment in time she's not enjoying it quite enough. Ever since the alpha session we worked well together. She was always a great help when I had technical problems and I think I was able to help her, perhaps, from time to time. More than any other person on the team she's lifted my spirits just by being herself.
It must be difficult being a junior member of the support team. All the rest of us are here to do science, make great discoveries and publish once-in-a-lifetime results. She's here to support: build machines, maintain communications, install and repair all our life-sustaining systems. She has a degree; she's a expert in aeroponics, which she might get to practice for real in ten years or so, assuming we're still here. And yet, here she is, not doing anything for herself and spending all her time basically fixing the plumbing. OK, she's in another star system, but it's still not the most glamorous of vocations.
Yes, I like Noriko. And I can't trust her. Not now. We were talking, as we do. The conversation turned to data systems, and I started to ask her -- casually -- about why we brought the data that we did. She talked about our data budget, some ten to the something or other bits that we could take with us, a kind of careful but tiny slice of the global Roam. Teams of A.I. employed stochastic analysis to select those data that would serve us best, based on criteria determined by the Taskforce. What we ended up with was a subset, the reference materials that we would find most useful and further the mission. So I laughed -- ha ha, why did we bring the works of Jane Austen and leave behind hab test data?
Her eyes narrowed. This is a girl whose eyes are always somewhere in the general vicinity of laughing, twinkling, slyly winking, or widely innocent -- they never leave that neighborhood. They don't narrow like that. She asked me what I meant, and I could see her eyes flicking as I talked, querying up more data. As prolific as Jane Austen may have been, she explained, she just wrote text which is highly compact to start with and compresses well. It's probably many times smaller than the missing test data. And probably more important too, she sort-of laughed; we all need something to read.
I can't confide in her again. That leaves exactly no one. There's no one I can really talk to. I'm alone.
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