"Meryll… these scores suck." Aisling declared unceremoniously as she looked over what I'd sent to her tablet. It was the end of the day and Ray was cooking up something that smelled pungent, but distractingly delicious.

"Damn straight they do!" I nodded, eliciting a bewildered expression from the captain "Ignore the scores entirely. Read through the results."

"For hundreds of trials? Meryll, I don't have all night, and even if there's some good ones-" She started, but stopped speaking as she stared at the tablet. She flipped through the log files slowly. For the first time since we'd met, she was speechless. She started flipping through faster, her brow furrowing in bewilderment "What the hell?" She muttered.

I couldn't help but smile proudly and bounce excitedly on my feet as I saw her reaction "Right?"

"Meryll, these are the kinds of survival, accuracy, and technique scores I'd expect from an AI running millions of runs on a seeded simulation, these are randomized trials. You're a prodigy, how the hell did it score you this low?"

"Scores are for computers." Ray chimed in, letting out a good-natured chuckle. Aisling glanced back to give her a perplexed look.

"The simulation expects a ship core to be running it; An unthinking human brain acting as a computer." I explained, sitting down at the table in front of her "But I'm not just a computer. I can create strategies on the fly, and act in ways the trainer doesn't expect. It doesn't like that, so it docks my score. Once I stopped worrying about making an arbitrary number go up, I found out I could perform way better on the metrics that matter."

"... 15 minutes in a war zone without being struck?" She asked, showing me one of the reports.

"Oh, ignore the three around that one. I admittedly got a little bored and tried to see if I could break the AI a little bit." I couldn't help but let out a laugh at it "I managed to slip into an enemy frigate hangar, and I just waited there to see what it would do. Turns out it doesn’t do anything. I had to crash the ship into a wall to exit the sim."

"Abandoned the battlefield. Ah, so you just left on that one." She was starting to sound amused.

"Yeah, guess they accounted for that one." I snickered "I know, not the best use of my time, but I promise you, I am more than ready to pilot Theseus into war if I have to!"

"Not with a 94% survival rate, you're not." She clicked her tablet off "I'm sure with your IT background, you know the importance of a few percentage points, especially when it comes to life and death. But your understanding and control of starships is clear, if unconventional. Well done."

"I'm… getting mixed messages here. Am I cleared to take off tomorrow or not?" I asked quietly.

"Well, yeah, we got work to do." She leaned back in her chair and smiled at me "And for what we're set out to do, you'll do fine. I'm just saying, you've got more training to do before I let you carry us through on ship to ship combat. I get that you're exercising your creativity, but your fundamentals need work. You need to understand why it is that there are standard maneuvers in space. It'll give you a better idea of how you can subvert them."

"So what do we do if we're forced into a dogfight…?" I asked.

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"We run." She said as if it was simple and obvious. "Live to fight another day."

I would be lying if I didn't say that my pride at my sim performances wasn't wounded a little by the order to flee any fight I ended up in, but it was also a bit of a relief. In truth, I didn't think I was ready to look death in the face in that way.

Aisling had closed her eyes and looked to be in deep thought. She did that often when she was pondering something serious, so I decided to leave her to her devices and looked to Ray "So what's for dinner tonight?" I asked.

"Curry." She declared happily, a spoon in her claw delicately stirring at a pot "It's a little bit spicy, so I'm not sure if you'll like it, but it's an ancient Earth recipe. I love cooking it, though. It can be a challenge."

"What's challenging about cooking?" I asked. Cooking food had always just been a simple science growing up in the outer colonies. Not much was made from scratch, and most cooking amounted to 'heat food, then consume.'

Ray turned to look at me. She didn't seem happy with me "You'll see. Food is an art, and curry is a very complex dish. Adding the right ingredients at the right time and developing the flavor as you build it is extremely important to a delicious meal."

"As long as you’re not putting in any of that protein slop." I quipped, watching silently as Aisling stood up from her seat and left the room. I figured she must have needed the restroom.

"Gods, no." Ray rolled her own eyes "I hope we never have to break into that stuff again. I know we will, but one can hope. So long as we're not stranded in wild space, I promise I'll be making real food. She turned and gave me a dissatisfied look "Food that you'll learn to appreciate the effort that goes into."

I stood up and approached her, looking past her to the pot of thick simmering liquid "Well, I can't say it doesn't smell delicious. If very unusual. What's in curry anyway?"

"A lot of different spices, milk, rice, meat." Ray replied, her smile returning as I showed my interest in her culinary art "Its a dish with a lot of variety, and a million different ways to prepare it. You never really make the same dish twice with curry. But you can make a lot of it at once, so it's good for feeding a group. Same goes for stews."

"Well, last night's stew was delicious. If not marred by the conversation." I muttered as I watched Joel file in behind us.

"Ready to go back in your tube?" He asked as he sat down.

"You have no idea." I sighed, moving back to take my own seat "The new hardware helps, but I still feel like I can't get any proper rest. I really want to get back into the void."

"Void?" He asked in his typically condescending tone.

"Yeah, being inside of the core module is like being in a sensory deprivation tank." I smiled as I began to whimsically reminisce about the experience "It's like… you don't see or hear or feel anything. The world around you disappears. You're in this satisfying emptiness where you can just rest, and the only thing you sense is yourself and the ship, which becomes a part of you."

He picked his own tablet from his pocket "Sounds like love."

"Love?" I laughed a little bit "You think I'm developing feelings for Theseus or something?"

"Lot of people love their ships. Don't think anyone's ever been quite as intimate with one as you are though." He teased.

I shook my head "No, I don't think it's a good analogy. What I've got with Theseus isn't love so much as… fusion I suppose. We actually literally become one when I'm in that chamber, and it's hard to imagine that it's not the same when I'm outside of it, just a little bit more distant.

"Ah, so it's like sex." He declared.

"Oh, fuck off." I laughed "Don't want captain to give you more lumps, do you?"

"Should I be giving him more lumps?" Aisling asked in high spirits as she returned to the room and slid a computer chip toward me on the table.

I stared at the hardware for a few moments before I picked it up and turned it over a few times "What's this?" I asked.

"Next bit of training. Since you're an unconventional pilot, we need an unconventional training method." She sat back down at one end of the table and smiled as she watched me open up my hip panel.

Placing the chip into one of my smaller ports, I closed it in and turned to my arm terminal to inspect the files. "'Horizon 18'." I mumbled. Recognition rang out somewhere in my memory, and as I perused the accompanying files, I realized something "Captain, are you suggesting that I train to be a pilot with a video game?"