Pylo normally did not feel particularly bored in the time Tunie spent in transit. She had a rhythm she settled into there was just a few habituated actions that she performed more or less thoughtlessly.

Tunie was too focused to speak too.

Everything was quiet and consistent and repetitious in pattern.

It was peaceful and meditative.

But these last two transits were growing increasingly busy and noisy. She could not drift half aware through the motions riding between moments of novelty whilst her stacks churned on nothing much but her own thoughts and the gentle soft murmurs of motiles.

There were thousands of Clerks milling about casting random thoughts and distractions to jolt her perspective back into sharper immediacy.

There was punctuations of interactions with the abominable canner micro-polity and its nest of venomous intrigue and motivations that it called a mind.

There was the omnipresent threat of something going slightly wrong with the Terran passengers and voiding the contract despite all of her best efforts.

All of these hitches and perceptual drags and conversational engagements stuttered and flicked and churned and jolted her perception about until Pylo was left crawling through her usual chores unable to let the silence and quiet still her mind back down into a smooth glide into the future.

And because of this she was left stalled with the wrong temporal reference over and over and over again.

Thinking more than she needed for a given task. Feeling empty, wasted and even frustrated in dredges of time before she could quiet herself down into a more appropriate state of mind for the tasks at hand.

And every time she managed to settle in and let the time rush by as her body flushed heat during recoup stops or strained to maneuver across Tunie’s bulkheads under acceleration another bright little rapid spark of a conversational partner would find its way over to her and start chattering away.

There were of course a few terrifying moments. Suspicious Clerks as agents of ▙◀ trying to weasel around her deals regarding Tunie’s safety and protection. But a few trawls of the hold and its archive to secure the targeted documents in her own chambers solved that problem.

Although it did make her chambers less relaxing to retire too.

Not that she did that much during a transit normally.

But with all the endless mind numbing stalls in her usual routine after every conversation it was seeming more and more appealing to go to her chamber near Tunie’s central pivot and just shut everyone else out for a bit to let her rest.

Ugh it was so tiring to have to consciously shed her last conversation partner’s temporal context over and over again like this. She much preferred to let these things smoothly flow naturally from moment to moment. But being left to think at the rate of even a terran let alone a micropolity while she was letting the thermal buildup in her body vent was torturously dull.

“↻↻↶▅↺↺ ◶⇝ ▁▇▄▃▂▁ ▁▂▃▄▇▁↹ ”

And there was Tunie’s midpoint call. Informing that now was the time to prep for acceleration flips. As well as a brief period of free fall cruise.

Right. That was a relief.

A short one but Pylo really wanted to savor that moment of gentle drifting without constant acceleration cramming her crannies into Tunie’s nooks all the time.

That was going to be nice.

She braced for it, motiles were moving to adjust the orientation of cargo to prevent any undue shaking.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Bulk fluids and such were already being pumped into new positions against the present acceleration in anticipation of the rearrangement.

▙◀ would naturally be adjusting and prepping the Clerics and their silly cans into a safe transition of acceleratory forces.

It was honestly a bit of a relief that Pylo did not have to attend to that themselves. Saved a miniscule amount of time. Although not worth the horrible doldrums of eternity that could stretch after a brief exchange with ▙◀.

This was a familiar and happy time. The midway point in a journey and also the point when Pylo could reliably start talking with Tunie again without overly distracting her. She would still be a bit preoccupied to make sure that none of her navigational extrapolations turned out to be false but nothing like the constant vigilance that full transit required.

[https://i.imgur.com/ZPcC9K8.png]

It should have been a calming and soothing moment to relish. Where her trip unfolded into a wonderful time of discussion and general banter with her best friend.

That is what it should have been,

But instead there was squawking alarm cries coming from the Terrans. Immunological response cries coming from the pseudo-aware Motiles that had been assigned to cargo shifting and a rather intensely flagged missive from ▙◀.

Ugh!

Pylo started shoving herself off down the hallway to find out what completely innocuous thing was threatening the life and health of her most fragile of passengers this time. Ingested the diplomatic digest from the micropolity. And began subtle immunological queries with Tunie’s motile system for signs of dangerous pathogen or injury.

As the details tumbled over her in the various channels of communication it took Pylo a few parses to actually aggregate the whole conversation of what was going on.

By the time she was pretty sure it was baffling and frustrating in the extreme.

She sent off a tailored blast to each party in her frustration. It was just too much. This was absurdity on absurdity. Pylo was used to being surrounded by magical leaps of reason by other species.

But this was so stupid.

“What do you mean the Terrans didn't realize what the reversed Acceleration would mean for their orientation vectors!”

She parsed and triple parsed the missive from ▙◀ and cross referenced it from the uncharacteristically rude fuming from Quarti.

“What?! What could possibly have made you think Tunie would flip herself around?!”

Pylo heaved and lurched along Tunie’s insides.

She pulled away from the communication channels and pulled into herself. Intentionally holding onto the ramp up of conversation with ▙◀ to stew and fume and work out her annoyance without actually venting.

She apparently had to see to an ‘altercation’ between Tunie’s Motiles which had gone to secure the cargo for transit and the Terrans.

One which ▙◀ despite sounding incredibly smug and aware of the situation and its cause had also failed to anticipate or prevent.

Even though this was ostensibly something they should have foreseen.

Actually that made Pylo a little bit happier.

It was nice to see the smug micro-polity fail to anticipate something about the baffling conundrum of a paradox that was Terran stupidity.

Not that it made Pylo any more likely to give them any slack.

But it was fun to have a moment of camaraderie.