The training proceeded apace, and Casey relished every second of it. All up until Peggy decided it was time for a cold bucket of humility over the head.

  “What’s this?” Casey asked. Looking down through the transparent hatch at the reclined seat tucked into an enclosed environmental capsule.

  “This is our prototype for a VR annex. It has rendering support so you don’t get as hot as well as cooling systems to keep you comfortable. Since simulated environments co-opt your sensory input, it has independent life support. That way you don’t die when you don’t react promptly to a hull breach.”

  The hatch lifted and Casey climbed in. As it closed over her Peggy’s voice came over the internal speakers.

  “You can store your helmet in the compartment behind the seat back. It slides down.”. After getting herself organized she accessed the pod’s control systems and logged in to her internal system's private instance. She had read up on how to customize it since Florida, but hadn’t done much other than load in some simple simulated furnishings. It defeated the point to go overboard with the computer in her brain since the initial simulated environment needed to be able to be used without rendering support.

  “There’s no place like 192.168.1.1.” she said to herself.

  As she connected to the ship’s network a door appeared in the wall. She walked through it and into a large and elegantly appointed house. A virtual Peggy was waiting for her.

  “I took the liberty of putting together something tasteful for your dedicated space on the shipnet. You can change it however you like.”

  “I’ll let Caz take a crack at it then. He always had an eye for interior design.”

  “We can skip the tour then. I have the simulation configured so that remote access to real space physical platforms is via the foyer closet.”

  In said closet was hanging a single coat in high vis colors with the words “DAMAGE CONTROL DRONE” on the back and a stylized octopus on the front right. Peggy waved vaguely to it. Casey pulled it off of the hangar and as soon as she put an arm through the sleeve her view shifted to a room full of octopus-like drones hanging on ceiling racks. Peggy was again standing in front of her. Casey’s point of view quickly dropped about 24 inches and she felt the ends of all the legs touch the deck. Taking a moment to search up all the available control options she quickly found the audio outputs.

  “Ok, I take it that I get to take this thing for a spin?”

  “Yep! The clamp has released, so just lift yourself off of the cradle”

  “OK, motor controls. Shit. That’s a lot of articulation. Alright, let me do this…” She tried pushing up off the floor, but instead all the arms just flopped around wildly. “Ah, I see why you are standing out of reach.”

  “Yep. It should be noted that we are recording. This is going to be a hit out at the fleet.”

  “OK. Need to get these inputs sorted so I don’t embarrass myself.”. Casey took five minutes to catalogue everything and make groupings to help keep it all straight. Peggy just stood by and waited while she got herself organized.

  “OK, ready.”

  “Please proceed, Captain.”

  Casey pushed on the deck again, completely misjudging the complexity and pitched over straight into the deck.

  “It’s OK! The floor broke my fall!” Hearing snickering behind her, Casey flopped the drone body over to see Allegro and Lee leaning against the far wall.

  “Oh, yay. The gang’s all here.”

  “We couldn’t miss this, Captain.” explained Chief Petty Officer Lee.

  “Wait until it is your turn.”

  “Don’t have to wait, my turn was two months ago.”

  “And no one told me? Traitors. The brig for all of you.”

  “I don’t think this ship has one of those.”

  “In that case. I am tasking you with the construction of a brig. When you are done, please report to it.”

  “I’ll get right on that, Captain.”

  “Good. You have until I get myself right side up again to get started.” Casey flopped around a bit more, resulting in the further spaghettification of the drone’s limbs.

  “No hurry then?”

  “I suppose not.” Casey sighed. She concentrated on untangling the drone, one limb at a time. “Check back in with me after lunch.”

  The two wandered off again and Peggy made herself comfortable on the deck where she was across the compartment. Casey pushed up again to angle the cameras up to the rack she had just fallen off of.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “I suppose I am not done until I get this thing back up there?”

  “That seems like a good stopping point.” Peggy agreed. Casey flopped over and started playing the drone’s legs out, one at a time.

  “The other Captains doing this badly?”

  “They haven’t been introduced to this equipment yet. When you are the best, you break ground for those who follow. Your sensory logs will be used to help train them.”

  “Wonderful.”. Casey concentrated on getting all the feet on the ground around the drone body.

  “You know there is only one way to be the best. And that is by running out of ways to fail.” Casey pushed up off the floor again, but the pressure was unequal and she toppled over again.

  “Wait, what was that?” She tried to hold one of the drone’s legs up to the camera. But her efforts resulted in it weakly waving back and forth. Regardless, she could clearly see the end of it. “This thing has grippers!” She moved the three stubby fingers through the full range of motion available to them.

  “It wouldn’t be much of a repair drone if it couldn’t hold things.”

  “OK, well that means options.” Casey slowly flopped the drone across the deck and pulled herself up via grabbing irregular surfaces on the wall, one limb at a time.

  “That’s a bold strategy, Captain.” joked Peggy. “What will you do in the bigger compartments?”

  “I’m not in a bigger compartment though, and I have plenty of failing left to do right here where I’m at.” Casey slowly reached up and gripped the nearest drone rack to her, still with a drone in it. Once she had half the arms holding on to drone racks or the grating over the ceiling itself, she let go of the wall and swung out to the empty rack in the middle of the room.

  She misjudged her handholds and collapsed into a heap on the floor twice on the way, having to start over. Finally she had all six grippers holding the correct rack.

  “OK. Now to twist over and back in… there. Wait, I’m upside down.” Casey pulled the drone back out of the rack and flipped back over. “Turn this way… got it.”

  “Good job. That only took an hour and a half.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if the system was incredibly intuitive and I kept fucking it up by being in my own head too much.”

  “Maybe. Let’s after-action this over lunch and come up with a training plan.” recommended Peggy. Casey logged out of the drone and found herself standing in the foyer again, holding the coat. She hung it up in the closet and headed back to the room she started in. As she walked into it the door to the rest of the house vanished. Finally the room went dark and she opened her eyes in the life support pod again.

  “So first I would like to just practice moving the arms. Can we turn the rack on the end to face the bulkhead?” Casey asked shortly over a chicken salad sandwich.

  “Tasking the drones now.”

  “Secondly, boxing gloves.”

  “What?”

  “Just some padded mitts that the drone can pick up with the manipulators so that incidental impacts don’t mar the decks or bulkheads.”

  “OK.”

  “And then I would like a number of colored circles on the bulkhead.”

  “Ahh, I follow. Yeah, good plan.”

  That afternoon Casey spent a few hours just practicing moving the drone’s arms from the storage rack. She put a few boxes on the floor underneath the drone, and then went back to the room with the VR annex in it to log back in and practice stacking them.

  It didn’t go well. At dinner time Peggy walked in to see boxes everywhere as Casey tried to pick one up, muttering curses under her breath.

  “I didn't think I'd see the day when the vaunted Captain Trainor encountered a task she couldn't accomplish.”

  “I've considered more than once flailing about, scattering boxes in a fit of temper, but there would be no noticeable difference from baseline.” sighed Casey. “This thing really is my bane.”

  “Let’s get some other stuff done after dinner and come at this fresh tomorrow.” Casey logged out of the system and met Peggy at the lift.

  “Was Lee this bad at it?”

  “It would not be fair to either of you to compare yourself to C.P.O. Lee.” Peggy chastised her.

  As Casey ate she considered the problem.

  “Peggy, in order to not stall out training let’s move on to the next thing. However, I would like to schedule a one hour practice session every day after dinner.”

  “Starting tomorrow?”

  “Yes, starting tomorrow.”

  The next day Casey started by standing a watch in Engineering and tried to study. After the third interruption from Allegro simulating something mildly catastrophic she put the books away and watched the consoles instead.

  And then she got bored.

  “Peggy, can I have a simulation of the repair drone on this projector here that I can control without the sensory inputs?”

  “Sure. Here you go.” A small holographic repair drone in its storage cradle appeared over one corner of the console, with a stack of holographic boxes around it.

  Casey logged in to the console and found the simulation in the systems directory. Accessing that she adjusted the orientation and then tried to move the tiny holographic limbs.

  Shortly before change of watch Allegro stuck her head in the door.

  “How are you doing?”

  “I almost have it…. There!”. Two holographic boxes were stacked haphazardly.

  “Spectacular!” Allegro exclaimed and warning klaxons started going off again. “Oh no, I depressurized the tertiary plasma circuits in power room three without purging the system first! I’m melting! I’m melting!”. She dramatically sprawled out on the floor.

  “Oh, the humanity! What a world, what a world…”

  “Allegro, you could at least do me the favor of taking your pretend emergencies seriously!”

  “Hey, you have pretend plasma melting its way through deck four and five, and six pretend crew members are now a puddle mixed in the sludge. You should probably do something about that.”

  Casey scrambled to activate damage control teams and vent the atmosphere from that section of the ship. The console showed the tasks in progress, but one corner of the screen had changed again to read “Simulation in Progress”.

  “How are the fusion students handling this?” She asked as she worked.

  “Oh, they are OK. The damage alarms aren’t going off in their compartment.”

  Casey looked back over her shoulder at Allegro, still sprawled out in the hatch.

  “How Arpeggio puts up with you sometimes is beyond me.”

  “She usually thinks I’m funny, but when I am bad she makes me chew bubblegum.” She shuddered dramatically. “Gross.”

  Casey directed her attention back to her console and saw that the drone simulation was now holding a top hat over its body and shaking a cane while kicking its arms out in a familiar dance number.

  “Allegro, will you get out of here?”

  “Can’t. M’a casualty.”

  Casey keyed her intercom.

  “Waste disposal, report to Primary Engineering. I have a plasma burned corpse here that needs to be ejected into space.”

  “But I’m not dead.” Casey ignored her and momentarily some drones arrived and picked her up.

  “I’m getting better!” she said as they carr

  ied her off. “I think I’ll go for a walk!” The hatch closed behind them now that Allegro wasn’t blocking it open.