NASA Enrollment Form

Looks like Grandma is going to be an astronaut...

SID 23203.7

GRAND NAVY INTERROGATION STATION IS17GALA9

MANDROID COMPANY DELTA COSBY SHARGOYLE

ID3 DESIGNATE J5QR PANCAKES

TRANSCRIPT, INTERROGATION SESSION 17

(Recording begins)

INTERROGATION DROID J5QR PANCAKES: Commence interrogation session hash seventeen. Interrogation subject please state your name clearly for the data tape. Thank you.

INTERROGATION SUBJECT CT2 ARMIN SHALE: (Audible sigh) So, we're gonna go through this again. Fine. Armin Shale. My name is Armin Shale.

ID: Argon Shade. I am sorry, but I can not locate a personnel file for a Plasma Cannon Technician, Second Class, with that designation. Can you please restate your name for the data tape?

IS: Armin Shale. Ar-Min. Shale, S-H-A-L-E.

ID: Sorry, I can not find Armin Eshaley. Do you mean Armin Shale, Grand Navy Plasma Cannon Technician, Second Class?

IS: Yes.

ID: Good evening, Technician Shale. Are you comfortable?

IS: Am I comfortable? (Sarcasm detected) Yeah, I'm awesome. How are you?

ID: Diagnostic scan complete. I am fine. Would you like some water, juice, or perhaps a Sanka?

IS: Nope.

ID: A soy-based meal-replacement wafer perhaps?

IS: No, strangely enough, sitting in this room for 19 hours just hasn't done much for my appetite.

ID: How are your bowels; do they need to be voided?

IS: Wow, you're literally just gonna keep asking me these gakking questions until I bash my head into the wall.

ID: I can assure you that it is never our intention to induce self-destructive rage in our interview subjects. (Pause) Beginning interview...NOW. Did you sabotage the primary...(searching for euphemistic designation)...PLASMA DRILL on the Keinmond Orbital Battle...err...Keinmond Orbital MINING PLATFORM on Standard Imperial Date 23202.14?

IS: No. For the millionth time, no, I did not sabotage the drill or cannon or whatever the gakk it was. Like I told the last ten mandroids that waddled in here, I was working on some personal business at the time of the first explosion.

ID: Clarify please: personal business?

IS: You know, I was baking some brownies. (Pause) Cheeses, I was in the bog, okay? In the head, the loo, the gents'. I barely had time to zip up my coverall and dash to the EEV before the bulkheads started to shear. I jumped into the evacuation pod right as the blast doors were closing. I mean, I wasn't even anywhere near the cannon when it went up.

ID: Yes, in fact, you were conveniently very far away from the cannon...er...drill at the moment of the initial plasma breach. Records indicate also that you left your post only minutes before the Communion strike team launched its diversionary attack on the Ghataki compound on levels 17 and 18.

IS: I mean, when you gotta go, right?

ID: So, you managed, somehow, to stay completely out of harm's way for the entirety of the skirmish between the Ghataki and the Communion force, emerging from your hiding place only after the initial explosion of the plasma drill...aw, gakk it...CANNON!...to amble casually to a conveniently waiting emergency escape vehicle. Is this the story you would have us believe?

IS: Well, yeah, I guess. Sometimes I get kinda comfortable in the can, and sometimes...I don't know, sometimes, I think I might drift off for a few minutes, just kinda doze. I can see that it looks kinda funny, but really, I was just at the right place at the right time, I guess.

ID: Indeed. Thank you for your time. Terminate interrogation session hash seventeen.

IS: Seriously, there's no sinister conspiracy here. Just a guy who's maybe too comfortable spending long periods of time in the toilet.

ID: Yes. Thank you for your time.

IS: So, I mean, am I, like, good to go? Are we done?

ID: No. A service mandroid will be in to see to your needs shortly. Thank you for your time.

IS: Motherf...

(Recording ends)

SID 23202.14

EMERGENCY EVACUATION VEHICLE EEV.2.BX2

GHATAK BLOODSQUAD B-RD-BEANS

GT1 DESIGNATE APPLE MARK TWENTY-SEVEN

WARLOG OF THE THIRD ORDER OF THE ETERNAL GHATAKI

By Priscilla-The-Bride, I yet live to dictate these words, the final record of the Ghataki of Bloodsquad Raven Dawn, my brothers, all; gone now from this realm to pass into a greater Land of Grace, and there to march along the mighty Boulevard to the celestial stair, and on, higher and ever-higher, into the marble halls and carpet-clad rooms of their eternity.

Bravely they fought, and fiercely, after the fashion of their storied forebears, the bloody Ghatak-Bataliko-da-Sangi. As in the poem, they "charged like angry boars, mouths open, slavering, hungry for blood." The filthy infidels fell before us like grass before the scythe, yet even as we gained advantage in the moment, the time of our undoing was at hand. For it was that the onslaught of our ragged and unkempt enemy was but a feint and deception, a mere distraction from the antagonists' true purpose; which was that of the creeping cancerous sneaking filth that can only harm from within, that of the cad, the craven, the underminer and infiltrator. As we finished our task, we felt a shudder in the corridor, then we heard the klaxons sound. The Holy Light, the Planet Breaker, spilling from its shell to consume our great Fortress. While we labored to defeat his brethren, a slinking spy had slipped through our defenses and had broken our plasma core.

The fortress shook and crumbled around us. My brother, Designate Limebark Hash Thirteen, bade me make my escape, so that the Warlog might not perish. So it was that I watched my brethren and vat-mates embraced by Holy Light, even as I ran away with the pinklings and the mandroids and the fish-that-walk.

And here is the end of this final entry, as I ready myself for the Yet-To-Come, when I must wander evermore, never again to see the glory of battle. I must pass the Warlog to my Master, and then follow the hidden routes and causeways to a place far away from my people to live out my empty days.

SID 23202.14

EMERGENCY EVACUATION VEHICLE EEV.1.AA1

LORD HIGH GOUVERNEUR BASMUS WETTERSTRUM,

VISCOUNT OF KRAKEN, GOL-GONATAR, AND THE GREAT EXPANSE

PERSONAL LOG

Plasma billowed out the breach and we were astonished by the sight of it; liquid light, blue-white and shimmering, drifting in great clouds from the rupture to engulf and obliterate.

The light poured from the ragged opening to envelop and consume everything in its path-- planets, moons, starcruisers-- until it seemed that every horizon was a part of its eerie phosphorescence. We watched the light and were entranced, even as we saw the other evacuation vehicles buckle and shatter amid the growing light, even as we felt the crackle and shudder of our ship's deflector shield failing as the light washed over us; we watched the light and could not look away.

Then a buzz and a pop and we were somewhere else, far away. Blackness, just blackness and void, and then the ship swung around and we saw again the cloud of coruscating blue, distant now, the cloud beginning to collapse into itself, light becoming bright and hard at the center of the cloud, the rest of the cloud drawn to the core in a narrowing disc of increasing brilliance. A new star, born at the moment of our greatest failure, at the site of our most profound loss.

SID 23201.12

POLIS REDCHILI, ANBARIUM, KASMAKANI III
PLASMA DRILL TECHNICAL TEAM KTT-1
CT2 ARMIN SHALE

TECHNICIAN'S LOG


Totally didn't think they'd let us off for Tupelotide, at least not for the full week. Here I am, though, back at home on Kasmakani, burning through my last free day before I have to shuttle off back to Kismy. Just goofing, kicking around town. Popped by Boot Source for an hour to catch up with Deke, then I bummed around the Old Mall and, afterwards, hiked down to the waterfront. Kinda warm out today, sunny for this time of year. I bought some pastecos from a cart at Riverplace, and then I made my way back to the Redwalk. I'm at Kafa Imperia now, sucking down a trenta of Java Fortika and plotting my next move. I might head down to Fountain Street, maybe check out the ladies in their seasonal attire (nothing sexier on a lady than a spangled jumpsuit, after all). Or, I may just hang around Redwalk for a bit, see what's happening at the Kettle or over by Aladdin's Castle.

Do not want to go back to the folks' place right now, though. I love the family, of course, but I just can't spend another long afternoon in that hot parlor, listening Memphis Startractor butcher Kentucky Rain while we all eat another heaping plate full of Fool's Gold Loaf. I love the holidays, but I think I might be Festini'd out. Honestly, I think I might be glad to get back to work, even if it is just to grind through a dozen more plasdrill tests- which, frankly, will be no more tedious than watching Blue Hawaii for the fifth time in a week, glori al frato.

SID 23112.29

KEINMOND-CLASS MINING PLATFORM KEINMOND II

PLASMA DRILL TECHNICAL TEAM KTT-1

CT2 ARMIN SHALE

TECHNICIAN'S LOG

Ok, so here's my big question about this whole feedback damper katastrofo: why are we sending so much accumulated plasma energy to the drill in the first place? As it is now, the SOP has us feeding 400 kilocams of APE into a plasdrill that is rated for a max of 250 kilocams. We have to shunt half of the APE to the damper loop just so the drill doesn't go redline and blow us all to smidirini. Of course, with this damper loopback deal, the reserved plasma energy is being channeled back into the main drill stream with enough of a delay that we stay below the maxline on the drill. Yeah, the drill stays in the blue, but the drill stream gets a turbo boost, which if awesome if we're trying to blow up planets but sucks if we're just trying to make a big hole.

The obvious solution to the problem is to just disable the damper and cut the the volume of APE we send to the drill, which is what I've suggested to Bert. He agrees, in principle, but says the bosses don't want us to tamper with the damper (hee hee, rhyme) at all, not under any circumstances. They just want us to keep running live tests (we've started to attract quite a crowd for these, for some reason), keep gathering data (and debris), keep giving presentations and demonstrations. I'm like, "How many times do we need to demonstrate that the drill doesn't work right?", and Bert just gave me a funny look and shook his head.

Anyway, hope this testing doesn't mess up the holidays coming up. Festini da fratos is in less than a week, and I'm looking forward to going back home to Kasmakani and getting some of Aunt Hank's home-made peanut butter banana pie. Man, I can't help it, but I do love Tupelotide. Gotta get my shopping done, though. Need to zip down to the exchange, see if they have any of that Spico Malnovo that my Ma likes. Tried to give her that Ledo de la Angla stuff instead last Festini, and I thought she was going to chuck it at my head. My Ma doesn't mess around when it comes to fragrances.

SID 23112.17

KEINMOND-CLASS MINING PLATFORM KEINMOND II

PLASMA DRILL TECHNICAL TEAM KTT-1

CT2 ARMIN SHALE

TECHNICIAN'S LOG

Okay, so I'm really not sure what happened with the plasma drill test. Everything started out five-by-five, all gauges reading blueband, plasma channeling cleanly through the manifold and into the globular matrices. No problems apparent, everything good to go. Then, right at the cusp of the ignition stage, WHAMMO: the feedback damper disengages and the plasma stream goes bugnuts. Long story short: instead of drilling a 50 m diameter hole into the test planetoid, we blew the thing to gakking bits. We turned a scale 2 planetoid into a cloud of talcum powder.

I have checked and rechecked the tapes, and I just can not see how, or why, the damper snapped back like that. We simmed the plasma drill 10 dozen times in the weeks leading up to today's test, and we never saw so much as a nm of movement in the FDS. The tracking system we had problems with, of course- repeatedly, endlessly: we finally just had to crack open the main tracking console and poke around, which is how we discovered that the holographic targeting module was wired-in upside down- but, even if we still had a tracking problem (which we don't), that wouldn't explain the FDS loopback.

So, to review, the plasma drill went apecrackers during its first live test, and we have no idea why. Glad I'm not the one who had to present the test report. Bert tells me the meeting actually wasn't too bad, though. He says the attendees (mostly Wing Commandants- but also two High Gouverneurs, for some reason) were pretty cool about the whole FDS overloop deal, didn't seem to be too concerned about it at all. Mostly, he says, they just wanted Bert to replay the test footage over and over again. Kind of weird. Also, they apparently really wanted to examine some of the planetoid fragments left over from the blast, so Bert had to send a probe into the debris field to gather up samples. So I don't know what that was all about, but, whatever.

I was planning to replace the entire feedback damper assembly this afternoon, but Bert told me to hold off. Apparently, Wing Commandant Neris wants to test the drill again tomorrow to see if the problem recurs. Bert says that the test planetoid is in the Kismy system, but I'm wracking my brain and I just can't think which object he's talking about, unless he means the Kismiti moons (ha ha).