"Hello, world. I'm in a bar, and one way or another, I'm going to figure out how I'll be spending my next year before I leave.

"I'm making one change to my live-vlogging format, which you may have already notIced. Anyone who hasn't given explicit permission to be included in the video feed is being replaced with a generic mannequin figure, through the magic of video-filter software. I know that I'm out of step with modern mores, but I still feel that respecting other people's privacy is a virtuous act.

"And now, you get to meet the first guest-star on this vlog with an actual speaking part; last I heard, he's going by Oscar. Oscar, say hello to the world."

"That's not the world. You have fourteen viewers."

"Fourteen live viewers. Who knows how many will watch later?"

"Whatever."

"Apparently, Oscar will be acting as our Eeyore today. Unless he doesn't. Just about everyone these days seems to switch moods at the drop of a hat. Moving on! Next to Oscar we have the body I was first introduced to as Janine. What should I call you today?"

"Ebony Dark Raven."

"Six syllables is a bit of a mouthful if somebody throws a stein and I have to tell you to duck - mind if I shorten that to, say, 'Dark'?"

"... 'Rave'."

"Rave it is, my currently over-gothed friend. And while the two of them look as human as anyone else, our third and final guest is something else. I don't recognize the morph, but that is you in there, Hal, isn't it?"

"If you continue to insist on conforming to your primitive singleton-identity paradigm, then yes, it's me. And what do you mean you don't recognize me? Didn't you play through Mule Irata like I suggested?"

"Even if I fast-time for a bit every day, I still only have so many hours to work with, and I'm still trying to build up my first nest-egg... I just skimmed a few wikis."

"Then for your information, this is the final, fully upgraded form of one of the Multi-Use Labour Element cybershells, right before the climactic battle against the piratical corporate raiders."

"I'm sure it's very authentic-"

"Don't see why you bothered to come if you can't drink."

"I like when they stare longingly at things they can't have. It would only be better if they were already deceased, like our darling dependable demised Dee."

"I'm pretty lively for a dead woman."

"That's what adds the frisson of the unnatural."

"If I'm unnatural, then... I really thought I was going somewhere with that."

"I can recommend a quite clever auto-quip generator; it doesn't fit into the open-source framework you focus so much of your efforts on, but never getting caught short should be more than worth the compromise."

"Is that how you keep up your intellectual façade? You just cheat?"

"No, I spend a lot of time practicing that façade; exercises that you would probably interpret as 'improv'. Or commedia dell'arte. Or role-playing games. Or-"

"I've heard the list before, no need to retread that ground. Ah, here comes our waitron."

"Our what?"

"I was told that 'waitress' was inappropriate, and she's too much of a gynoid to be a 'waiter'."

"And you think confabulating a new word is any more respectful than a term that's as obsolete as 'aviatrix'?"

"... I think I'd enjoy being called an aviatrix."

"I'd say you're more of a janitrix."

"Honestly, I'm still hoping she'll become my osculatrix."

"Now, now, everyone, she's probably not nearly good enough a versificatrix to keep up with the rest of us."

"If you're all done playing at being fellatrices to each other's egos? I didn't invent 'waitron' - it's literally defined as the gender-neutral variant of 'waiter' and 'waitress'."

"I don't mind being called a waitron, it's a lot more respectful than what some of the tourists from Earth say. Anyone want to listen to management's latest spiel, or should I just hit your usual preferences profiles?"

"Usual."

"Beer me."

"Black coffee."

"The profile, please."

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

"Alrighty, be right back."

"Now then, getting back on track... anyone up to explaining to a poor, benighted primitive why everyone's trying to stick their oar in what was supposed to be a simple salvage run?"

"There are a number of different interests and affinities that have collided together. First up were the extreme sports enthusiasts, the ones who think a Marianas-to-Everest race is a fine idea. There are the science enthusiasts who want Observatory B fixed. There are profiteers who want the salvage. There are extreme backup enthusiasts, who, like you, want to drop off an extra copy of their mindstate out at an identifiable point in the middle of nowhere."

"What do you mean, 'like me'?"

"Dee, you've spent the past week shopping for an intact, archival storage device of ten exabytes or more, enough to hold ten copies of your mindstate, plus checksums. And four years ago, you posted to a digital-revival support forum that with any decent storage medium, nonuple redundancy should be enough to preserve a copy of a mindstate for an arbitrarily long period. Did you really think nobody would put the pieces together?"

"... Yes. Yes, I did think that. Do I want to ask why you've been keeping track of my shopping lists?"

"It was a joint project amongst everyone who's been debating. The would-be racers wanted to know if you were upgrading your ship's acceleration, and so on."

"Every time I forget everyone thinks privacy is dead, you-all have to keep reminding me of that. Fine, yes, I wanted to make an extra backup. But I still need to at least break even on the trip, or else there's no trip. Why haven't your fancy new-fangled decision-making processes already made a decision about the best option?"

"They did. The racers found out what the best option for them was. The salvagers found out what their best option was. The scientists found out what their best option was. And so did everyone else. They're just not the same best options. And none of us are rich enough to pay off everyone else to leave us alone to do our own thing. So everyone's been trying to convince everyone else to change faces - that is, to join their side."

"The plotting and bloodletting has been most delightfully entertaining. I've been doing quite well for myself making short-term bets about who's going to backstab who next."

"Lovely. And without any firm deadlines, nobody has any incentive to wrap it all up and make an actual plan, right?"

"Actually, at least ten of your current viewership are involved in this little debate, and most of us are placing bets about whether, and how, you plan on cutting through this teensy tangle of a Gordian knot."

"And here I was hoping to make a grand pronouncement about how Tit-for-Tat makes more complicated strategies in the Prisoner's Dilemma useless. Ah well, I should be used to being an open book by now."

"You're like a puppy trying to hide its messes. It's part of your charm."

"... Thanks. Anyway, I'm sure you're all aware of how little time I spend on the whole prediction-markets... thing. Any betting pool that I don't have special knowledge of, I lose money on; and those tiny few that I do know more than average about, the margins are so slim that it's usually not worth tying up my cash anyway. But my primitive perspective did come up with one thought that doesn't seem to have cropped up in all this modern economic jargon - and that's that betting markets had a precursor-"

"Insurance! You found a company that's going to let you mitigate your risk, by betting against yourself!"

"... You couldn't let me finish just one revelation myself?"

"No. No, I couldn't."

"Figures. To add a couple of details, I dug up some non-public reports on the most-likely state of Observatory B, paid a bit to run it through a salvage-value estimate calculator, and took the results to Lloyd's of Luna, along with some of my private financial figures. I let them figure out the best meta-betting-market to consult about the local unresolved discussion. They figure that the odds of me completing a salvage run, and the value of the salvage, are high enough that they're willing to cover my expenses... even if somebody else manages to arrive before I do and grab the best salvage, or an agreement gets drafted which involves no salvaging at all, or the like. So I'm covered no matter what you-all agree to, and unless you've got a completely unpredicted proposal to make, I'm launching soon. So how does that affect your betting pools?"

"You really stirred them up, and they're thrashing back and forth."

"I'm actually doing quite well, by leveraging penny-scale arbitrages."

"Dear Dee, do you mind firming up a few answers?"

"If it'll clear up whether somebody's going to try to beat me there, I'll dance the foxtrot."

"I prefer the tango, darling. Will you be upgrading your ship's drive?"

"Pumpkin's frame isn't big enough for a bigger one, and I couldn't afford any, anyway. The best I could do would be to rent a strap-on drive-unit for an AU or two before sending it back, and that'd only save me a couple of days. Pointless if I'm salvaging or repairing, and nowhere near enough to make a difference if I'm racing someone with a better engine."

"Are you willing to carry some cargo out with you?"

"You mean to bring some other backups? That, I don't mind. Within limits. I've only got so much free space left inside Pumpkin to move around, but I could bring along a few friends' backups; and even just for a nominal euro or so so it's technically an official delivery contract. More than that, I'd want to discuss it as a shipping run, and would probably have to get an external cargo-container for Pumpkin to push... depending on how much mass, if that reduces my acceleration and extends the trip out noticeably, I'd need enough fare to cover the extra month's mortgage payment. Or payments."

"And that just flatlined that part of the pool. Looks like the backupers are getting ready to collaborate on a bulk request."

"One last question, delicately-dimpled deliveratrix..."

"Let's not start that up again."

"... If someone found another Caldwell Aerospace-built ambulance, of the same model as Pumpkin, would you be willing to race them?"

"Well... I don't see any reason not to, but I don't see any point, either. Observatory B is way, way out there, so it's not like anyone could get an advantage by slingshotting a planet, or risking an aerogravity assist in a gas giant's atmosphere, or any of the other exciting tricks. And I'd be wary of anyone willing to improve their acceleration by taking less survival equipment than I'm packing. So whoever wins is pretty well determined before the race would start. Honestly, I'm still not sure why anyone was even thinking about competing to get five-fifty AU out first."

"Hey, you two, don't forget, she doesn't have a contender's mask. I've seen her fence - she almost doesn't compete at all, she just... tries her best."

"Ah, right."

"An undeniably explicatory factoid."

"What? Not you, I mean what's wrong with trying my best? Isn't that the whole point of competing?"

"Don't worry your furry little head about it, dear. That answers that. You can finish getting ready for your trip. Nobody's going to try to get in the way of your salvaging, though there may be one or two who take the trip alongside you just to say they did."

"Okay, that's settled. In terms our soon-to-be-absent fellow vacuum cleaner would understand, it's time to get our Klingon on. Waitron! Bring us the bloodwine, and keep it coming!"

"... Well, world, don't ask me to explain what I'm missing, but it looks like the trip's on, so I'll bid you au revoir, and close out this broadcast before we start our traditional arguments about intoxication."