[i]Collab between Justric and idlehands[/i]

Naomi pressed her hand to the cryobed that held her sleeping husband. After leaving her sister and the brightness of Pauline, the shadow of melancholy crept up. She missed David and the worst was that he would not share in the pregnancy and birth of their first child. She leaned over and kissed the cold surface of the bed and whispered to him. 

“Love you, sleep well.” 

With an inward sigh she walked away, towards the office to start her new position, assisting the network administrator to monitor the software that ran the ship. It was a change but her being an odd person on the third shift required her to fill in where she was needed. Naomi spotted the short, robust woman who moved around the room in a quick, efficient manner. Her dark curls bounced with her movements and she peered at Naomi, her eyes dropping to her stomach and flicking back up to her face. 

The younger woman smiled and held out her hand, “Naomi Ben Zeev, here to help keep an eye on things.” 

The network administer shook her hand, her grip strong and firm, “Harris, nice to meet you. Take a seat. Have you worked with the Ni-techs before? I read your file, you were doing coding before. This will probably be a bit easier but you have to be alert.” 

“Not a problem, I’m happy to help. And no, I have not worked with them before,” Naomi admitted, taking a seat and her skirt tucked neatly around her knees. “I’ve only heard...some things about them.” 

“Yes, well…” The older woman sniffed in disdain. “They can be a bit odd at times. At the best of times, really. Granted, they’ve got every reason to complain but we can’t really allow ourselves to empathize with them too much. Command wants a firm hand on them. Otherwise they get too creative.” She tapped a few commands on her tablet and unlocked the NI-Tech profiles for Third Shift for the new girl. “Robert Bach, also known as Hob. Pure trouble but he’s one of the best. Yuriko Soto is more disciplined but not overly aggressive. Charles Milton can be a bit mischievous but that’s all. You’ll get the rundown on the other Watch later when you meet them.”

Harris moved to sit behind her desk and took a long slow drink of tea before continuing. “Hob is the watch leader, God knows why. He’s requested this meeting be just with him, and to keep matters peaceful I agreed.”

Naomi sat up straighter, her hands folded in her lap, “This should be interesting. What kind of trouble is he? Does he pry into places he doesn’t belong?” 

She smiled a little, “I can’t really blame them, though I’m not completely sure what all they do, it cannot be easy to be...tied to the ship as they are.” 

Her dark eyes narrowed slightly in pity and she shrugged, “I suppose someone had to do it. I would not wish to trade places.” 

The network administrator merely shrugged. “We all have our crosses to bear. As far as what sort of trouble Hob is? You’ll see shortly.”

Even as the two women conversed about him, the NI-tech was shrugging off the stiff muscles that came with lying prone for so many hours at a time. Hob was thankful just to get dressed again! It was easy to forget how cold the rest of the ship was compared to the heated compartment of the NI tubes, and he always ended up shivering to the point where his teeth chattered while the medicos removed all the wires and sensors. He tried not to think of the damned catheter being pulled out. There had to be some better way they could take care of that concern, someway that took up less space than adult diapers and was more favorable towards recycling. Only if First and Second shift hadn’t come up with something, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to either.

Flexing his rarely used authority as Watch lead, he had sent Yuriko and Charlie off to bed even as the other Watch team went online. There was no point in all three of them suffering for a lack of sleep. Besides which, Hob fully intended to have it out with Harris and her crew over all the changes that were taking place. Yuriko had been right - it was simply too much to take.

By the time Hob reached the office, a sullen anger was settling in the pit of his stomach. He pushed through the door straight into Harris’s domain to see the woman sitting at ease behind her desk, a younger woman with an extended belly close by. She barely got a glance from the NI-tech. His scorn was focused solely on Harris.

“This better be fucking good, Harris,” he snarled. “You could have warned us about this new procedure as well, maybe? By the time you’re done grilling me, I’ll be able to get a whopping two hours sleep before I have to be on duty again, and fuck knows when I’ll be able to eat! Or is that something else you plan on, hooking us up to feeding tubes so we can be just that much more fucking efficient?”

Harris gave a wintry smile. “No, but that could be arranged. Thank you for the idea.”

The snarl Hob gave was quite genuine and definitely wrathful. “Get. To. The. Point.”

“I thought you should meet our newest team member. Hob, this is Naomi Ben Zeev, my interim assistant. She’ll be handling the monitoring of the NI-Techs when you’re in the system so that I have more time to look into some of the things that happened during Second Shift. Naomi, this is Robert Bach.”

“Hob.” The name was flatly stated. “Call me Hob. And do we really need another watchdog?” He looked back towards the younger woman. “No offense, but we get enough shit as it is, lady. Speaking of which…” He rounded back towards their superior. “Why the hell didn’t anyone from Second Shift check the memory caches for the murder victims? Security could have nailed this asshole a hell of a lot earlier if they had just had an NI-Tech pull up the last scans!”

“Naomi was silent as the NI-Tech confronted the administrator and she twirled the fabric of her skirt in her fingers. She furrowed her brow in concern as he spoke of his lack of rest and food. Exhaustion was not something that lent itself to performing a task to the best of one’s ability. She winced at his snarl and the idea of hooking people up to feeding tubes was repugnant. Already she had a sinking feeling about this position, the techs were not a happy bunch from the sounds of things but they were necessary and Harris seemed cold. She shifted in her chair, and cleared her throat. 

Her ears perked up at the end of Hob’s rant, memory caches were something new to her. The sleepers brains were supposed to be nearly dormant but if they could be probed for memories, perhaps they were not so asleep after all. She wiggled in her seat, her hand touching her stomach. An idea started to form but she put it aside for later, her focus was on Hob and Harris right now. 

Naomi leaned forward, “Pardon me for my ignorance, Hob, but what ‘shit’ do you get?”

Harris shot her a look, her hazel eyes steely. “We really don’t need to go into that at this time-”

“Oh, the hell we don’t!” Hob practically crowed. He gestured towards Naomi all the while glaring daggers at Harris. “She doesn’t even know does she? How the military kidnapped over half of us for this little pet computer project? How they fucked with our heads and ran wires through our brains?” A fingernail tapped one silver circle upon his temple. “And let’s not forget the new change in shifts from seven hours to four hours with barely any time for sleep or food or anything else! There’s no consideration for us or what we can do besides make the ship go, and given the fact that some idiot didn’t know enough to NOT send in Amber and Pak Sung at the same time just shows how little regard you have for us!”

Naomi’s eyes went wide, her lips parting in surprise. No she was not aware of the shanghaiing of people to be NI-techs nor their increased workload. She looked at Harris, and then to Hob, the animosity thick between them. 

“Hob, that’s terrible,” she said, “Perhaps we can find a way to improve your conditions. I don’t think that should be an issue would it?”

Her gaze shifted back to Harris. These people suffered enough without the added stress of lack of sleep and food, surely it was not too much to ask. She stood up and felt a dull ache and she absently rubbed the small of her back. 

“After all, they’re necessary and valued members of our team,” she smiled at Hob, her dark eyes twinkling with hidden mischief. She already disliked Harris, as she would dislike anyone who thought it was alright to torture people for the sake of the greater good. 

Hob looked slightly mollified at Naomi’s words. Harris, on the other hand, shook her head firmly as she scowled. “It’s because the NI-techs are so valuable that these procedures have been put in place,” she insisted. “Psychiatric doesn’t want them in for more than four hours at a time; leaving them in longer leaves the techs more prone to psychosis and breakdowns. Even as well as First Shift did, they were showing signs of stress at doing seven hour shifts logged in. Engineering is on our collective case for maintaining the equipment; if the NI tubes are damaged, there’s little we can do to repair them. Medical is well aware of the physical stresses of the job and agrees with Psych that they need to be continually monitored. And Command…” 

The Network Admin rubbed at her face. “Command does not want the circumstances of the recruitment methods released to the public. It is a shame what had to be done, everyone thought there would be more time to find and train techs, and we were all wrong. But we can’t go back and fix any of it.”

“And what of the punishments you have in store for us if we don’t toe the line,” snapped Hob. Harris’s voice was grating on his already frayed nerves. “No trial for us, is there? Medically induced comas and lobotomies is what the men in black who snagged us off the goddamn street promised us, and anytime we asked afterwards, Command was pretty fucking quiet on the topic.”

Harris was hesitant now, not wanting to tread into this territory but having little choice. “It’s… true that NI-techs might have to face… unusual disciplinary actions… depending on the situation, you understand. There are simply not enough of you to waste, Hob. That is why it is so important-”

“Stick it, Harris,” he snapped. “You should reactivate all the Watch teams on all the shifts.”

“The technology is too new,” the admin persisted, “If there is a cascade failure-”

Hob shook his head, realizing it was pointless. “You know Harris, this isn’t getting us anywhere. Again.” He stood and roughly pushed the chair away behind him. “The dangers of a cascade failure are just as great whether there’s just three of us in at a time or nine, and that would still leave whoever wasn’t logged in at the time for you to still work with. Their watches wouldn’t be any worse than they are now.” Both hands were thrown up in mock apologies. “But Command wants its way! The doctors want their way! The engineers want their way! The shrinks want their way! Fuck, I’m surprised the goddamn miners don’t have a say in what happens to us!”

Leaning forward on the desk with both sets of knuckles, Hob made a steely eye contact with Harris, one she refused to flinch from. “Besides,” he added in a quiet and spiteful tone, “it’s not like you have a use for us once we reach New Canaan anyway, is it?”

Naomi jerked back at his shouting, putting a hand on her stomach and watched until his tirade abated into a bitter whisper. She could not help by sympathize with him, how awful it must be to be tied to the ship as they were. If they were so necessary, perhaps they should not be treated as slaves. She waited, feeling a bit awkward as they argue. 
“Ms. Harris, if I may?” she stood up, closing the distance to Hob, standing at his side and she smiled pleasantly as she could to the administrator. She was her supervisor and it would do no good to antagonize the woman for doing her job. “Perhaps I can help make them more comfortable, maybe as a liaison between the NI-techs and the team? I am an extra body, so that would give me some extra time.” 

She smiled confidently at both of them, “We’re all in this together after all.”

Harris leaned back in her chair, her dark eyes shaded as she regarded the pair of them. She really didn’t need an assistant as per se, although the NI-techs would always require monitoring; they were just… too creative for Harris’s tastes. There were advantages to be had in passing the buck, or at least putting someone else in the way of it. “Very well then. Congratulations. You are now our official Neural-Interface Technician Liaison Officer. It’s your job to make sure they do theirs and to handle any issues that come up. Disciplinary actions will still be handled by Command, of course, but I would hope you won’t let that become a problem!”

Hob snorted. “Don’t you know better than to volunteer for anything?”

“Quiet, you,” growled the admin. “You wanted someone to come up with ideas how to make things better? There you go, Hob. Best of luck.” Harris grabbed her table and turned her chair to one side to glance at the computer screen attached to her desk. “Dismissed.”