[hr][h1][center][color=009496]Tahlia Spade[/color][/center][/h1][hr] After she left Owen to his own devices, Tahlia began to wonder if she was too hard on him. Not just now, but in general. She knew she had a tendency to generate some unfair preconceptions about people, and as irreverent as Owen could be, she recognized that he was ultimately here for a reason, and he wouldn't be a psychologist if he didn't at least sort of care about people. Maybe she would try to talk to him later and try to level with him. Tahlia hadn't realized that she had paused in the hallway to ponder this. She looked around to make sure no one, especially Owen, had seen. Thankfully, Owen was already gone, and no one decided to sneak up on her in the meantime. She let out a small sigh and continued into the cockpit. [hr] [center][img] https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/3b/da/98/3bda9822e40c9e40783c675a5432bfa6.jpg[/img][/center][center][h3][hr]The Artemis: Cockpit[/h3][/center][hr] The door opened with a hiss, revealing the interior of the ship's cockpit. It wasn't very large, only having space for the pilot and two ancillary crewmembers on either side of the room. Not even a co-pilot. That seemed rather unconventional. Still, most passenger jets really only required a crew of 3 to operate properly, and this ship wasn't much larger than one. She went to the port-side panel and tapped on the display, bringing up a diagnostic screen of the ship's major systems. She played with the display a bit, seeing what she could bring up. Engine status, power output and consumption, reactor operation and temperature, life support, and so on. This screen seemed to be dedicated towards engineering. If she was reading it correctly, everything seemed to be working properly. All of the major systems, anyhow. There was probably some way to get to some of the subsystems, but she let it be for now. She was more interested in navigation. She walked to the opposite side of the room and touched the Starboard display. This one had what she was looking for, though she had a harder time reading the information on this screen. She toyed with the display, hoping to get a more meaningful representation of the information displayed. She eventually found some information about the planet they were heading towards. Yaicarro. An Earth-like planet that's about 0.9 Earth masses and a little less than 6000 kilometers in radius. It has two small moons and an orbital period of 426 Earth days. It orbited at a distance of roughly 185 million kilometers from it's star, which was roughly the same size as the Sun. Atmospheric composition and density were estimated to be similar to Earth's, with a max deviation of 2% in regards to gas composition, with about 90% of Earth's atmospheric density. Estimated average temperature was 12 degrees Celsius, a little cooler than Earth. There were other fields, like axial tilt, biological makeup, and rotational period, but they were all marked with "unknown." No doubt because it would be nearly impossible to detect such things from Earth. They'd have to find such things out for themselves when they got there. She scrolled again to another display, which gave a pretty good idea as to where they were. The ship had left the Solar System roughly a year after launch, and was currently about 20 light years away from Earth. Their destination was about 4 light years away, with an estimated arrival time of about 25 years from now. That made the decision of turning back a lot easier, but it did mean that they would have to re-enter the cryo tubes at some point. Tahlia turned away from the screen and looked at the pilot's seat. She took a couple of hesitant steps towards it, not knowing if she should see what she can do with it. It occurred to her that this was why they needed a pilot, but surely there were other, more qualified candidates than her. She crept up to the seat, which was positioned right in front of the window. There were several screens on either side of the chair, no doubt with abbreviated versions of what the other displays had to show. The window itself had a heads-up display installed, but all it showed was direction relative to orientation, along with the fact that the ship was on autopilot. She decided to sit down and further familiarize herself with the controls. Even though they were in a completely different environment, it felt good to be in a pilot's seat again. Tahlia noticed that the main flight controls seemed to be modeled after most other aircraft, with a yoke in front of the pilot's seat. There was a throttle on the left, and a joystick on the right, along with rudder pedals. She wondered what the joystick was for. Finer movements? Possibly. She tapped one of the displays, which brought up the autopilot. It was set to turn off once the ship came within 500000 kilometers of the planet. Another display brought up flight information. She couldn't understand some of it, but the one thing that jumped at her was their cruising speed. 50000 kilometers per second. The sense of scale hit her at that point, and for a moment she had to stop. She looked out the window, and for the first time since waking up she finally stopped herself long enough to really take it in. They were in space. A great big void of nothingness. It was a sobering experience, to see firsthand how vast it really was. Tahlia looked around the panels for a way to turn off the HUD and dim the screens. She found them soon enough, turning off as many distractions as she could so that she could get a better look at the stars. The room became almost completely dark, lit only by a few small buttons and the stars. The more Tahlia's eyes got adjusted to the dark, the more she could see. More stars faded into view, until eventually she could see the sky saturated with specks of light. Soon enough, she could even make out the galactic equator cutting through the upper right portion of her vision. She leaned back and relaxed herself, realizing that she had barely given herself any time to appreciate the view until just now. All she needed was a cup of coffee and some music and this moment would be perfect. She decided to let go of whatever priorities she may have had and just let herself exist in the moment. She cleared her thoughts and let herself just stare into the void. She brought her legs up and crossed them, then brought her arm onto her leg, resting her head on her palm. She let out a small chuckle and let a smile crack on one side of her face. She had always been intrigued by space, but she never thought she would be lucky enough to be there. She wasn't sure if this could be considered luck, per-se, but she was here, regardless of the circumstances. She shifted her position one more time and closed her eyes, satisfied, in a weird way, at where she found herself. [hr] Tahlia awoke as she heard the door open and Benji enter the cockpit. The lights and displays had since come back on, illuminating the cockpit as usual. She wondered how long she had been asleep for. It wasn't her intention, but the nap felt good regardless. She sat up and turned to look at Benji, who predictably went right into chatting away. Having just woken up, Tahlia was too groggy to really care or pay attention. At one point she stretched herself out and let out a yawn, which kinda woke her up. It was then that she noticed what Benji was saying. It was the first time she had seen him talking in such a way. She considered that maybe he actively tried to stay happy as opposed to it being something that just came naturally to him. Maybe she was reading too far into it, as usual. [color=009496]"It's something that's occurred to me several times before. How can you know that anything is real? When you dream, do you know that it's not real?"[/color] she responded matter-of-factly. [color=009496]"I stopped giving a shit; it's not worth worrying about. I just focus on the present, regardless of whether it is or isn't real."[/color] She got out of the seat, making eye contact with Benji for the first time since he entered. [color=009496]"It's only natural to think like that sometimes."[/color] she finished, stretching one more time before heading to the door. [color=009496]"Let's get going, then."[/color]