TITLE: All Growed Up
AUTHOR: Michael J. Gallagher ( mikejoe@odyssey.net )
SYNOPSIS: Trance's first morning "back" on *Andromeda* after "Ouroborus"
DISCLAIMER: GRA is owned by Tribune; I am just ..... well, let's say that our beloved moderator isn't the only one who gets strange ideas. But I ain't makin' money off it, so don't sue me.
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{The morning after the events of "Ouroborus" .... }
The console next to Trance's bed had been beeping for five minutes when her eyelids finally fluttered open. Her hand crawled across the bedside table and switched it off.
"Rommie?" the golden-skinned woman with maroon dreadlocks asked. "What time is it?"
"0430," the ship's voice answered.
Trance groaned. "And who told you to wake me up at this time?"
"You did. You made this your standard wake up time when you came aboard."
"Oh, yeah, that's right, I did. Well, we're going to change that. In the meantime, gimme another hour, 'kay?"
"All right, Trance."
Trance was snoring in a matter of seconds.
******ONE HOUR LATER******
"Trance?" the ship's voice prodded. "*Trance?*"
"Nnnnnnnnwhaattizzit, Rommie?"
"It's an hour."
"Is it, really?"
"Yes."
"OK, might as well garrupp." Trance levered herself to a sitting position and swung her feet over the edge of the bed. "Lights -- "
The lights in the cabin came up to full strength. Trance squeezed her eyes shut. "-- HALF! Half, Rommie. No, make it a third." The lights went down. "That's better."
"Sorry," the ship said.
"No problem." Trance shuffled over to the desk, scooped up the bathrobe slung over the chair, and put it on. Then she hinged her feet into a couple of slippers by the bed. Then she shuffled to her cabin's hatch, stopping to look at herself in the closet's mirrored door.
The bathrobe was a dark shade of purple with white, yellow, and orange flowers on it.
The slippers were fuzzy, shaped like rabbits, and a bright shade of purple.
"Rommie, when I was younger, did I seem .... obsessed to you?"
"Not particularly. Why?"
"No reason." She slid the closet open. It was filled with cat suits, all varying shades of purple.
She slid the closet shut. "Rommie? The outfit I arrived in? Where is it?"
"I'm still washing it," the ship's voice answered.
"I thought you said you'd be done by now."
"I underestimated the amount of residual blood in it."
"What can I say? I've lived in interesting times."
"Um, I don't suppose you could wear .... "
"NO."
"Give me two hours."
"Ok. Is the coffee on in the mess?"
"Yes, but you don't -- "
"I do now." Trance shuffled to the hatch; it opened on to the nauseatingly brightly lit corridor of the *Andromeda Ascendant,* but at least it wasn't purple.
After allowing a couple of seconds for her eyes to adjust -- in other words, when she could finally hold them open without flinching -- Trance shoved her hands in her pockets and started shuffling down the corridor. Before too long, she heard pounding footsteps approaching.
'Oh, yeah, I forgot about this,' Trance thought as Tyr and Dylan rounded the corner and jogged towards her, looking more awake than any sentient being had a right to at this hour.
"'Morning!" Dylan said, smiling.
"'Morning, Dylan, Tyr," Trance said, managing to screw on a smile and hold it until the two men had jogged past her. She'd always suspected there was something unnatural about joggers; now she was sure of it.
When she finally got to the mess, Trance found Beka sitting at the table, looking very tired and with her own coffee cup.
"Hey, Beka," Trance said. She spied the coffee pot and shuffled towards it, silently vowing to kill (or at least, hurt mildly) anyone who came between it and her.
"Hi, Trance," Beka said. "Oh, man, did I have a long day yesterday."
"Not as long as I had." Trance had reached the coffee pot and started to pour herself a cup.
"You may want to watch it, Trance, it's kinda strong this morning."
"Is it? Good." Trance flopped into a chair next to Beka's and took a sip. "Oooooh, I needed that."
"So, you're a coffee drinker now?"
"I'm still Trance, Beka. I'm the same person you knew, 'purple pixie' and all. Just ... not purple anymore."
"Hey, didn't mean anything by it."
"I know. I tend to wake up grouchy."
"Oh, really."
"Still, it helps to be back home, although there are some things I've forgot about."
"Like what?"
Just then, the mess hatch snapped open, admitting Harper and Rommie. Being an android, of course, Rommie never slept, and so, had an excuse for not being groggy. But Harper was already fully dressed and bursting with energy. Disgusting.
"... any number of things -- Oh, hi, Beka ... Trance," Harper said, " -- my first guesses would be all the tesseracting yesterday either desynchronized some processors' internal clocks from your master mission clock *or* loose connections."
"I can send nanobots to check the connections," Rommie said.
"And if that doesn't work, I'll dive in and check the system from that end," Harper said, cheerfully. "What's next, Darlin'?"
Mercifully, Trance didn't follow a tenth of the technobabble spewed by Harper and Rommie as the former went from autochef station to autochef station consuming orange juice, eggs, toast, and a bagel as quickly as they were produced, all without sitting down, holographic displays periodically appearing in the air in front of him to punctuate one of Rommie's points.
" ... Ok," Harper said, coffee cup in hand as he and Rommie started to leave, "you schedule a spacewalk for me to take a look at star tracker four, and *hopefully* -- 'bye Trance, Beka -- hopefully we won't have to completely replace the optics but you might as well start grinding some new lenses just in .... " The hatch clanged shut behind the ship's engineer and its avatar.
"That," Trance said.
Beka smiled, even chuckled. "So Trance Gemini is no longer a morning person? Whaddya know, you really are all growed up."
THE END
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