"Hello, world.

"You'll notice that I'm not aboard Pumpkin. I am, in fact, in my office. It seems that yesterday's little incident has raised all sorts of red flags with various branches of officialdom, and I'm grounded until they finish going over Pumpkin, and my skillset, with a variety of fine-toothed combs. I may have to spend a few days taking exams; several bureaucrats seem completely befuddled by the notion that they don't have explicit records of everything I know how to do.

"Fortunately for me, the bond I need to operate as a vacuum cleaner, and my insurance, and a few other financial terms, cover me for losses incurred whenever I'm interrupted to perform S-and-R. My insurance company and I are still engaged in a spirited debate about what's included in my coverage, for delays arising from yesterday, but I'm fairly confident the claims adjuster will eventually see things my way.

"Guy will not be visiting Observatory B. He ticked off all the official boxes he needed to, so he's not going to get charged with negligence or be deported, but I'm not going to trust him aboard Pumpkin, and Gerard doesn't want to deal with the hassle of life-support for a bioform. Apparently, Guy also has a different philosophy than I do about insurance, betting markets, and generally covering his behind, so it seems like he's stuck with a former-ambulance that's not ever going to be certified for flight again. The drive cracked a small but important point of the structural frame. He's going to either have to pay for storage fees, or sell it for scrap. I suspect the latter. If he does that soon, I've got my eye on a few pieces that aren't particularly hurt by insufficient maintenance, and would be nice to bring with me; not too many of Pumpkin's class get put onto the market anymore.

"Gerard is willing to wait for me, after having it so thoroughly pointed out how nice it is to have a second ship nearby, in case anything goes wrong. I was willing to take the trip solo; he's not feeling any urges in that direction.

"So! Today, I'm just doing some Q-and-A, with Francesca doing her usual vital job of sorting through the questions.

"Starting up: I'm currently living in a small motel. I'd already had Huey, Dewey, and Louie pack up all my stuff from my and Sparks' apartment and store it here at my office. She already has a new roomie lined up. It should only be a couple of days, and if I do need to take some tests, I don't want to worry about trying to get a good nights' rest while crashing on a friend's couch.

"The office? I'm planning on paying rent for the office for the next year, even though I won't be here in person. Mainly, this is where I keep my business mainframe computer. I plan on routing at least some of my long-distance comms through it; even today, not many computer engineers bother to spec out, let alone build, what I'd consider to be a decent interactive VPN server for week-long ping times, so it's just easier to homebrew my own, known setup as a proxy. Plus, it's not only where I keep a backup of myself, it's where Francesca lives. I see we have a few questions about how, if my finances are so precarious, I could afford to hire her; the answer is that I'm not just her employer, I'm also her landlord, and most of her salary is in kind rather than in cash. In case you're worried about me abusing my power over her, she's in a labour union, I'm still in the Maritime Union, and our contract is union-approved; she can quit and get a new job and move out and get a new home whenever she feels like. I'd be sorry to see her go, though; she's really helped put a shine on my online presence, and even helped with the contracts for the trip.

"Let's see... no, I don't have to worry about my fur shattering and breaking off when I'm in vacuum. My body is still, well, body-temperature, and even with some subdermal insulation - not exactly fat, more like a thin layer of super-blubber - vacuum is a pretty good insulator, keeping my body-heat pretty closely tied to my body, including all the way out to the tips of my ears and eyelashes.

"No, I'm not a nudist. As long as I don't do anything silly with it, legally, my fur counts as clothing. Even with that, I still usually prefer wearing at least undies, shorts and a shirt; if for no other reason than that pockets are very handy.

"Here's a simple one: What am I using to capture this video? I've mostly been using either of two viewpoints. I'll just tip the camera down... I call that my 'go-bag'. It's basically a robotic backpack, I usually have it follow me around, it's got a colour-changing surface to stay reasonably unobtrusive, and it holds some emergency supplies. And by 'emergency supplies' I mean a vaccsuit, air, water, and food recycling, and a radiothermal generator that'll produce enough juice for four years once I turn it on. And a solar-panel large enough to keep the gear running indefinitely, as long as I'm no further from the sun than Ceres. Anyway, the go-bag's got gecko-tech pads, so can cling to walls or ceilings, so any shots you've seen from near a solid surface are probably done by its robo-eyes. What's recording me right now is another one of my little construction projects, a quadcopter. I focused my efforts on making it as quiet and stable as possible, even at the expense of battery life; it recharges itself fairly often from the Go-Bag's batteries.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"Ah, I've got a note from Oscar! 'Why the'... well, that's a lot of swearing. I think that bit's swearing, I'm going to have to look it up. Okay, here we go: 'Why didn't you take your', more swearing, 'tests? We all thought your scan had gone bad and you were literally brain-damaged!'. Hunh. That explains a few things, looking back. Well, Oscar, you might have heard me occasionally mention that one resource that's scarce for me is time. I only have so many hours I can dedicate to education. Going through the rigamarole to get official recognition that I know what I know uses up time; and I didn't need the paperwork. I figured if I ever did, I'd just take the tests then. Well, now, I suppose.

"And one from Hal. 'You. Us. Poker. Tonight. No excuses.' ... Hm. Sounds ominous. You-all do know that, whatever my education, I'm still practically broke, right? Well, I guess we can talk about that tonight.

"And something from once-Janine, who was 'Rave' the other day, and appears to be going by 'Leatherpants' today. ... It's just a winking emoji. That feels almost more ominous.

"... Really, Francesca? Well, fine, you're the popularity-metrics expert. It looks like we've got at least one conspiracy theorist amongst us, who, as best as I can make out from this translation, is accusing me of a years-long conspiracy to entrap Guy and set myself up as a hero in order to... okay, it looks like whoever this is is tying me into a larger conspiracy about digital-revivals taking over the world. Or already took it over, and everyone since the em-pocalypse is just a puppet. Or the em-pocalypse was a cover-story for the secret rise of superhumanly-intelligent AIs. Honestly, this goes on for a while, and it's hard to tell what parts of it are consistent with what other parts. I'm also not sure what the sender's motivation is in accusing me of all of this, if they think I really am part of some sort of world-controlling cabal with the power to disappear or mind-edit all its critics.

"I'm not really sure how to respond to that; I'm not happy even just giving the whole idea any credence by bothering to interact with it. Just saying 'No, I didn't' seems both more than sufficient and not nearly enough.

"Hm.

"Alright. Part of the reason I started vlogging was to share more about myself. As someone once said, 'You never had a camera inside my head!', and I'm pretty sure almost everything I do inside Pumpkin is still private. So I'm going to show you all something that I made while I was inside my ship's machine shop, and that I've kept locked away since then.

"This, my viewers, is a finger ring, made of iron, with faceted edges. It's meant to be worn on the pinkie of my non-dominant hand. Except I'm not qualified to wear it. I might never be, but I hope to, one day. A century before I was born, it was designed to be the symbol of a certain kind of engineer - one who was aware of the damage that could fall on innocents from faulty engineering, and who wanted a constant reminder, to help make sure they'd avoid doing anything so terrible. I keep it in its little box in my desk drawer to help remind me, if not quite so often. I have some long-term plans to get the training to become a proper engineer, instead of a tugboat's mechanic - and when I graduate, to put on this iron ring. But that's not going to happen for a long while. I had to make some tradeoffs, and put off some of my plans, when I decided to start working in space.

"In case all of that didn't get my point across, I find the idea of sabotaging something as complicated and dangerous and wonderful and inspiring and frightening as a horizon drive, or a spaceship, to be... disgusting. And every synonym for 'repugnant' you can find in a thesaurus.

"Francesca, could you roll some tape of some cute kittens or something? I just need a few moments."

"Boss, if I cut the vidfeed now, I'd never forgive myself. You'd fire me, and I'd deserve to be fired."

"Hmp. Fine. Might as well let all the emotional-matrix analysis algorithms get their fill, leeching every moment of any dignity. Got anything else in the queue to upset me? People from both sides of the political spectrum who think I'm a traitorous idiot of their opposite persuasion? Some religious loon who thinks the real me is dead and I'm a soulless abomination? An accusation of bestiality? Ah, I know - someone trying to convince me the whole universe is a simulation, and the only way to escape is to kill myself? I always have fun reading the latest variant of that one."

"No, boss. Just one more for you to read."

"Right. Hit me."

"Your ex wants to say 'hi'."

"... What?"

"It's from FazBaz at Rowrbazzle, and matches your addressbook certificate; and I'm pretty sure nobody else would want to send you an udder-pic-"

"Oh-kay, that's enough of that, you colossal click-hungry clerk. If it's really her, I'm definitely not going to intrude on her privacy by live-vlogging this. Let's wrap this up - seriously, this time."

"Yes, boss!"