"'Hello world'. We should rename this vlog to that.

"Faz here, and I'm hosting this telegraphed kinetoscope being broadcast from the Pumpkin today."

"That's 'Pumpkin'."

"I just said that."

"'Pumpkin', not 'the Pumpkin'. Proper noun - it's a name, not a description."

"With all the orange safety paint she's got outside, I'd call it a pretty good description."

"I could always start calling you 'the Faz'."

"Fine, fine, as long as we're sticking to your silly primitive English, instead of something as sane as français, I'll go along with your silly little ideas about grammar."

"Much obliged, ma chérie chèvre cornue."

"That's only a pun in English."

"So who's punning?"

"... Anyway, while the two of us are aboard the... ship named Pumpkin, I've been keeping an eye on things, and have convinced Dee to let me pull video from most of the other cameras. Even if she's been a puante and nixed me from using any of the most interesting videos I've got."

"Before you get too carried away, Faz, remember that I've always wanted to learn how to play bagpipes. I've got a machine shop and I'm not afraid to use it."

"Are you threatening to use me to make a goat-skin bag? That's kind of kinky even for me."

"... No, I just thought you hated bagpipe music. You always put earphones in whenever I put on any music with a drone."

"Oh, that was when we were both in school. Your ideas about what kind of music helps studying are as ridiculous as haggis."

"Hunh. In that case, I think I've got a few playlists to shuffle around."

"You do that. Moving on!

"Right here is what I'm now certain is the heart and soul of this ship: an actual physical bell. Every half hour, one of Dee's 'E-bots stops whatever it's doing, comes here in person, grabs this rope, and rings it - up to eight times. Every half hour, day and night. Dee could just plaster clocks on all the display walls, or set chimes ring inside her own AR, or even just make at least some sort of sense by having a normal clock that chimes on the hour; but instead she uses this completely obscure and archaïque and inutile timekeeping system.

"Hear the robots with the bells—

Silver bells!

What a world of merriment

their melody foretells!

How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,

In the icy void of night!

All the heavens, seem to twinkle

With a crystalline delight;

Keeping time, time, time,

In a climb to the sublime,

To the tintinnabulation

that so musically wells

From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells—

From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

"Dee is still hopelessly enmeshed in her twentieth-century mindset, which is full of nineteenth-century notions about how minds work. She was ever-so-polite when she tried to ask me if I was actually a person, if I had a real subjective perspective, and so on. I pointed out that there are people who don't have a narrating voice in their head, people with such severely deficient autobiographical memory that they can't directly recall anything that happened before they graduated, people without sexual desire, people without empathy, people without a sense of pain, people to whom music is just sounds... and just about all of them live happy, productive, social and fulfilling lives. And once we started digitizing brains, we found a few people without qualia. Once we knew what to look for, we found a few scattered all over the place, and they've got a few stereotypes now, but they're as happy as anyone else.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"I pointed out to her that there are software patches for digitized people like her that would turn off the parts of her brain that do the qualia thing, and if she wanted, she could try that for a while, then turn those parts back on. She'd still have acted pretty normally, and would remember doing whatever she did. She got such a sour expression on her face, with the cutest crinkles on her snout - I added that one to my albums.

"Bong bong bong bong

Bong bong bong bong

The bells are ringing

The song they're singing

The sound is bringing the people 'round

We hear the instructions

We follow directions

We travel great distances to the sound

The bells explain what we've been lacking all along

We were disorganized and that was what was wrong

And now we know

The way to go

The bells are ringing, we hear the sound..."

"Pumpkin isn't just small, it's tiny. I knew it was pint-sized before I had my body shipped here, but I didn't realize just how small it becomes after a week living in it. I don't know why Dee bothered getting her wings, she can only fully stretch them out straight up, or maybe straight down. I'd be surprised if the whole place is even a dozen cubic metres - and that includes all the space used up by machines and furniture and gear. Maybe one body-length wide, one deep, and eight high. I'm working up an AR program that makes everything look like it's made of glass, and that the glass tower is resting on a nice, wide landscape... but it's only been a few days and I'm already feeling kind of stir-crazy. I don't know how Dee can stand to stay here for as long as she's planning to. She's tried telling me, but I think she's just got part of her mind wired differently than mine is.

"She's taken me outside a couple of times, to watch the stars. Neither of us bothered with a suit; she said if I slipped off, she could think of seven ways to get me back without even resorting to a backup plan requiring any effort. She's also started building me a new set of hooves, which can stick to Pumpkin's walls like a gecko's feet.

"I'm going to admit that I might have m' fichue by putting myself here. Even if I'd kept the canon, I don't think it'd have helped; what it fixed in place didn't have anything to do with claustrophobia. I'm pretty sure I'm going to need a lot more than an AR overlay... I can think of a few ideas. When the itch to gallop around gets too much, I could just turn myself off until we get somewhere. I could let Dee pack away this body and live in VR fulltime. I could splurge on a fast courier to meet us, and mail myself back home."

"You're a bit massier than just your backup unit - that might be a bit expensive, even for you, unless you're going to leave your body behind."

"My bank account's bigger than yours. If I want to mail myself, postage won't be a problem."

"Mm. You'd been putting on a pretty cheerful face, so I'd thought you were getting on well... but if you're having problems, we've only built up a few days' worth of speed; I could turn Pumpkin around and come to a stop to let you off - in the Saturn system, since we're heading by it anyway. I expect I could think of some reasons good enough to keep my bank manager from being too unhappy with the delay; if nothing else, I don't think I've kept Pumpkin's drive turned on for this long before, and I've got some much better data about which spare parts I'm most likely to need. Adjusting my load there before I jump into the deep dark was always one of my explicitly-listed contingency plans, anyway."

"But... what about Gerard's tests?"

"He just needs the engine turned on, and he can keep doing that while we decelerate, and then make some big lazy loops until Pumpkin catches back up again."

"You're sure you wouldn't lose your contracts from the delay?"

"I may not be able to market myself worth a fig, but negotiating that sort of contract detail has been my bread and butter for years. Let's see, instead of skimming past Saturn two weeks after launch, if we turned around halfway, we'd arrive on day nineteen. Instead of arriving at Observatory B, five-fifty AU from Earth, about one hundred fifty days after launch from Insulo Tri, I'd arrive five-forty and a half AU from Saturn after, mm, another one hundred forty-nine days, after re-launching from Saturn. Gotta love constant-thrust courses. So I'd only be out the nineteen days of the trip to Saturn, and another day or two at whatever moon I dock at. It'd definitely cut into my leeway time - but that's what leeway is for in the first place."

"And... you wouldn't mind?"

"Faz - you're bewildering, annoying, fascinating, and a joy to be around. I have been very happy getting to re-acquaint myself with you, in both your bodies, the last few days. But if you're getting antsy already, then keeping you sane for the full trip becomes a matter of safety. I don't mind letting you off at Saturn. I don't mind if you hop into VR the rest of the trip so you've got a whole ringworld to gallop in. I don't mind if you turn yourself off and nap until we're home. And I expect we could come up with another idea or six if we tried. The one thing that would be complicated is if you waited more than a few hours from now to ask to be dropped off, when I'd have to turn Pumpkin around to decelerate; backtracking would likely run me out of my leeway."

"Dashing thro' the void,

Out to the Milky Way,

O'er the moons we go,

Laughing all the way;

Bells on goat's tail ring,

Making spirits bright,

Oh what sport to ride and sing

A spaceship song tonight.

Jingle bells, jingle bells,

Jingle all the way;

Oh! what joy it is to ride

Out to the Milky Way!

Jingle bells, jingle bells,

Jingle all the way;

Oh! what joy it is to ride

Out to the Milky Way!

"I'm leaving out the verses I came up with that mention 'lingerie', 'risque', and 'roll in the hay'."

"I did think the scansions of 'solar array' and 'digital display' were a bit forced."

"I think I'm going to go virtual. You've got a lot of video walls, and an internal AR; I could still chat with you while you're doing things in here. And like you said, I can make my VR as big as I want it to be. And you might need that nineteen days. We just need to figure out where to park my body when I'm not using it."

"Eh, we can roll you up in some blankets like a mummy, and stuff you into your bunk. Which would also minimize any temptation I feel to start drawing moustaches on you, or otherwise prank your physical body."

"I'll moustache you, you, you- tickle fight!"

"And we'll catch you all tomorrow, viewers!"