Hob sighed as he watched the Briefing from their place within the net. He felt sorry for Sergeant Larson as she had to stand up there and announce at large that there had been a murderer among them, one who had not felt compelled to leave his past behind him. Nor could he envy her as she fielded the questions from the masses. Not that they weren't good questions, but most of them simply did not have answers! And those that did? Well, they hardly mattered now. The victims were dead, their murderer was dead, and paranoia was going to be on the menu for the next several months. While Hob had little doubt that a great deal of this would fade in time, he knew that everyone's fears would resurface come next Shift Change. "And good luck getting these folks back into their coffins," he muttered into the aether. 

He noticed the frizzy haired girl vomiting into one of the holo projector panels and winced. Thankfully Yuriko was already on top of it, re-routing the hologram image to different projectors to help cover the gap that started to appear even as the panel short-circuited. It wouldn't total cover the lost image, but at this stage Hob doubted anyone in that room was paying too much attention. Death had a way of taking top priority in the human mind. Efficient as alway, she followed up with a maintenance request to engineering.

As the meet and greet continued, Hob reflected that far worse for everyone would be the time in-between. There would be those who would now be looking at their fellow workers throughout all of the next three years, wondering who among them might be a thief... a rapist... a murder... 

"Oh, fuck," Hob swore vehemently as he composed another message to the Sergeant. Annette and Charlie looked up in surprise at his cursing. Not so much Singh or Yuriko, as they tended to be quicker on the uptake. Tyson just didn't care. But having the rest of Third Shift suspecting one another could easily lead to feuding and witch hunts that would jeopardize the mission. Hob wasn't big on military protocol or discipline. He was big, however, on making sure the medicos and engineers who maintained the NI tubes were kept alive! Another message was sent off to the First Sergeant's command tablet.

[b]You might want to specify that not everyone who was moved is a suspected or known criminal? Maybe before they all leave? Otherwise anyone assigned to a new shift is gonna be the odd man out pretty damn quick. Just my two cents.[/b]

Singh caught his attention, the Indian businessman dressed in golden brocade suit straight out a Bolliwood movie. "You and Annette should introduce yourselves, Robert. After all, on paper you are the watch leads for this Shift."

The curly haired grandmother, dressed in a 1950's housecoat with curlers, looked towards Hob. As if on cue, they burst out laughing to send a flock of butterflies soaring throughout the 'net. Gasping for breath, Hob wiped away a virtual tear. "What am I going to tell them?!" [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo4Wi6-XHL4]'Hi there! This is Eddie, your shipboard computer, and I'm feeling just great, guys, and I know I'm just going to get a bundle of kicks out of any program you care to run through me!'[/url]" He called the sound file up from his own memory. Annette sniggered while Tyson whooped it up in laughter. Hob, still laughing, sputtered out, "No, no, wait! I got a better one, I got a better one!"

He took a moment to compose himself, straightening his bow tie before before saying, [url=http://www.innermind.com/outerlimits/sounds/oolsnds/o_voice.wav]"We are controlling transmission.. We will control the horizontal... We will control the vertical..."[/url] Hob couldn't even get the whole thing out, and even Singh was laughing by the time he finished his recalled memory of The Outer Limit's opening. Even as they started to recover, Hob decided he'd need to go bug OLGA to review and recapture the mental image and audio of that show. "Oh, man, I wish there was someone named David leading one of the teams!"

Tyson, the youngest of them, looked confused even as he grinned. "Why?"

Hob grinned even wider. "So I can ask him, [url=http://www.moviesounds.com/2001/justwhat.wav]'Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?'[/url]" True, it wasn't as funny given the theme of that particular movie, but it helped. The artistic Hob in his plaid suit knew he had to keep them all distracted, otherwise their own fears could popular the system with Ghosts based on murder and death. Just because the trauma they endured as NI Techs made them a bit more callous than the rest of the ship's passengers and crew didn't make them inhuman. Or any less concerned about their own well being.

"No, we'll skip the whole introduction thing." Hob finally snorted. "Anyone who needs to know who we are either already knows or will find out soon enough. Besides, we all agreed, right? No leaders. Maybe out there in the real world, but we can't function like that in here, not even in theory. We work together."

Hob looked at the screen he had summoned and shrugged. "I'll leave this up if you guys want to keep watching. I want to go see what OLGA's been up to."

Yuriko rolled her eyes. "You know she's not real, Hob! Besides, she has no access to anything outside of her own programming. All she can do is watch us run around the system and run her own, separate routines."

Pursing his lips, he nodded sagely. What Yuriko said wasn't strictly true, but Hob saw no reason to contradict her. "I known, I know. But she's got a cute avatar. And more importantly, she's been awake all this time, guys. The other shifts don't tend to pay much attention to her, and there's probably stuff that went on that the other teams might have missed or didn't think was important to leave in their reports-"

"Which we really should read," opined Annette. Hob ignored her.

"Not to mention that as an AI, she has a different point of view. One that we might want to pay attention to from time to time?" He also left out that he found the concept fascinating! As a human living and interacting in a virtual world, Hob saw OLGA as the only 'native' inhabitant who interact with the NI-Techs in turn. Departing for the Core, he left the teams behind him even as he sent a message to Dr. Brock with signature. 

[b]Yo, Doc! Gonna go ask your daughter out on a date. Rollerskating and malted shakes before we go make out at the drive-thru movies. What time you want her home by?[/b]