2320:
At last! After decades of cost overruns, design inefficiencies, and construction snafus, our new rulers have seen the light ... and hired me as their chief starship engineer! When the Running/Blocking Offensive Nine of the Kodiak City Hibers was elected to collective power on a wave of unstoppable popularity, I thought the case was hopeless - amazing as they are at playing and winning at our national pastime, what do those jocks know about hiring engineers? The clunky old colony ship and scout designs whose prototypes we finally - finally - completed this year, with technology decades out of date, are proof positive of the previous engineering team's incompetence ... but now, at last, they've found the right guy: Me!!!
Not that I'm conceited, you understand. Probably there's a much better starship engineer than me out there someplace. Like that girl at the ribs bar who solved the hyperspace calculus problem I was fighting with over lunch. She said, "You look like you're trying to do too many things at once," and of course that made it obvious that the whole problem was applying gravitational folding coefficients in too many dimensions simultaneously. She might be a genius who saw that intuitively, and a better starship engineer than me. Or she might have just been appalled by the way I was scribbling diagrams on my napkins while gobbling ribs face-down in my plate and operating a dodecimensional calculator with my feet. But just you watch! Even if the girl at the ribs bar is better, at least I'm decent at this sort of thing.
First order of business is to scrap all the designs my idiot predecessors made that aren't already in production. "Fighter?" "Destroyer?" What?! Anyway, they'd have to be plating their toilet seats in platinum to explain those ridiculous costs. (Just got a report from the Colony Ship on its way to that green star now. Apparently not. Their toilet seats are encrusted with diamonds, and the crew is complaining about the effects on their rumps. I told them to pretend the hydroponic park on board constitutes "woods" and use that.) Right. We're going to need more scouts - and colony ships eventually - but not with those preposterous designs. I hit the drawing board and come up with a Stretch 1.0. If these new Stretches would cost us an extra 25% or so to build, even more to maintain, and feel infinitely less comfortable to fly, they'd be just like the old Scouts! Mine look better too. And the RBO-9's already approved three for next year! Hey, I'm liking this job!
2323:
Got word back from that outmoded colony ship now. They've reached Denubius, and it's a beauty.
Grarrogrraagroaaa, their new Planetary Governor, called in gleefully, "Atmosphere's breathable! We're settling down here and tearing this old clunker up for parts!" I warned him to be careful since my predecessors weren't great on safety protocols, and I walked his salvage crews through the disassembly process, including how to keep the fuel tanks from exploding spontaneously, and they've got the place running pretty nicely now. Some kind of jungle paradise, and there are rumors the local flora includes powerful aphrodisiacs of some variety. Might be propoganda, but people are buying into it. We've got millions of Ursans heading out there to join them already. And for what it's worth, the projected birth rates there sure make it sound like they're doing a lot of breeding.
More importantly, my new Stretch 1.0s are following the old fuel-guzzling Scouts out toward the stars! I've boxed them in blue on my scrapbook images. Beautiful, aren't they? We could have twice as many without even a line-item in the budget if not for those already-obsolete Scouts my predecessor designed eating up expenses. I'm going to lobby to get rid of the stupid things as soon as they can be replaced.
2325:
First scouting reports are in. Care to guess whether they came from an old Scout? Ha! In spite of giving them a year's head start, it was one of my Stretches that brought our first images of fiery Darrian, the nearest star to Bulrathi space. Of course, it helps that none of the Scouts were going anywhere that close to home, but they could have been if not for the cost overruns that only let us build two with the resources we had at the time!
2326:
It's been another great year for my little pet starships. The reports from the dry world of Talas, with barely a trace of minerals on the surface, were all but forgotten in the wake of the images and scan files from the jungle world of Klystrom and the mineral riches of icy Yarrow! I've already talked with Munchencrunch at the Main Ursa Science Complex Laboratory Enclosure, and he's starting pilot projects in planteology and propulsion already, so we'll be able to fuel our ships with Deuterium - good enough for five parsec range so we can use Klystron as a refueling base and stepping stone to the other worlds - and rapidly develop planetology technology, the sooner to build a colony ship suited to Yarrow's icy surface! The RBO-9 has committed some token funding to the project, and I have every confidence that when Munchencrunch confirms he can research the techs we need, they'll get the serious funding they deserve.
2327:
Don't mind me. I'm just going to go home and weep now, okay?
We're not working on Deuterium. Munchencrunch can't even figure out where to start. The best he can do is try to come up with a basic hydrogen fuel that won't get our colony ships past the fire fields of Darrian. He'd hoped to speed up our whole economy with improved ecological restoration techniques or improved terraforming too - he even thought terraforming could be set up super quickly and rapidly developed into a way to live on ice worlds like Yarrow. When push came to shove though, the best he could do was to design colonies for a theoretical class of world no one has ever even seen, that's barren of life, but with otherwise acceptable environmental conditions. He was pretty unhappy about it himself when he told me, but a few minutes later, he came in with a huge grin. I thought he'd had a sudden breakthrough ... but no. Apparently the RBO-9 agreed to fund him anyway, and even start his proposed pilot project in construction technology. Well, yippee for him. What am I supposed to do with hydrogen cells and barren bases? I think I'll go see if there's anything in the fridge.
2328:
There's never anything in the fridge. And Munchencrunch was all depressed about his latest pilot project; it looks like improved industrial technology will be able to cut our factory costs by about 10% pretty soon, which I thought was a good thing, but he says it means we'll have no way of cutting down on industrial waste for decades, and have to keep cleaning it up the hard, expensive way. He cheered up pretty quickly though; the RBO-9 is still funding him heavily, even though I'm starting to think his M.U.S.C.L.E. is crowding out his brains. The improved industrial tech he described should be a super-quick research project, and open the way to real construction techniques: The kinds of things that will let me miniaturize my starships and get some serious colonies going, finally!
2333:
So, what kind of compromising pictures does Munchencrunch have of how many of the RBO-9? He calls all his projects major disappointments, and yet look at this guy's funding!
Why can't I have 133 billion credits to play around with? The truth is though, I'm happy for him. Look at all the energy he's putting into construction tech, even though it's ready for a breakthrough soon from token spending alone. That's pretty much a gift to me. The idea is that we want to know right away whether we'll be able to translate our industrial tech improvements into a new kind of armor for my starships. If so, then that immediately becomes our top priority, so I can use it to fit reserve fuel tanks on a new super-efficient colony ship design and send one out to claim Klystron ASAP. If not, we'll have to hope the hydrogen fuel cells we're pushing will suggest means of building Irridium ones to extend our current range by half - a much slower project for Munchencrunch's construction-specialized staff. And if those aren't available, then the disgusting death spores he's reluctantly designing now just to advance the field of planetology (they turned out to be the only thing toward which our brand-new terraforming techniques opened the way) become much more important: We'll need the insights they provide into colony miniaturization, along with another industrial improvement, to achieve the same long-range colonies.
2335:
Well, our hard work paid off: Factories are ready to go up faster than ever, and Munchencrunch finally had a choice about what to study! We're going to have duralloy armor for my beautiful starships someday, and the attendant miniaturization means long-range colony ships coming soon ... to an orbital pathway near you! Munchencrunch is getting to work on the project at top speed. This is great. I've decided to start calling him Munchy.
2339:
I just saw the plans for our new hydrogen fuel cells, and they're brilliant - don't even take up any more space than the old petro fuels, and I can get my Stretch 1.0s retrofitted with the things all the way out in deep space. That only brings one new star into range, but it's something. Anyway, I'm looking forward to next year's giant party. We're projected to finish our 200th factory-city here on Ursa, and there's going to be a huge celebration! There should be enough leftovers in the office fridge to last for weeks!
2347:
Would you believe it? There are aliens out there! They call themselves Darloks, it seems.
The Stretch scout ship that's been taking orbital surveys of Spica for the past five years spotted an anomaly in the outer system, and investigation revealed a "Darlok Scout" swooping into the system. It appeared at first to attempt an attack run, but either it was bluffing, or it changed its mind when it saw the sleek design of my Stretch 1.0; the Darlok ship turned tail and fled the moment it caught sight of my baby. The RBO-9 and the diplomatic corps and everyone else is in a frenzy of activity, but I'm not impressed. Whatever Darloks are, they obviously don't design starships as well as me.
2350:
I can't believe people are still talking about the Darloks three years after our one and only encounter. There's important stuff going on here, like the fast-growing chance of a breakthrough on Duralloy armor, and the new funding for my department - we're getting ready to build long-range colony ships as soon as the new technology is ready, by designing a huge hull with the same properties, and testing all the common components. And at the same time, Munchy has pilot projects going in three new fields! The reports just went public today that his teams will be studying a brand-new Mark II battle computer and Class II shields to protect our ships, and forgoing a new rocket design and a "gatling" laser nest design in favor of laser miniaturization - theoretically to the point of making hand weapons of the things! Bears around Ursa are making noises like, "in case the Darloks prove hostile, bla bla, haven't heard from them in years, bla, what might they be planning, bla bla bla bla bla bla." But what it really means is: I'm going to have some new toys to play with before long! Wheeee!!! New ship designs! Weapons miniaturization to fit more on each ship! Life ... is ... good.
2356:
Well, I'd like to say I was right, that the Darloks are the least of our worries. It's been just about two years since that deep space broadcast of a solid gold newsdroid babbling about census rankings, and the furor about Mrrshans and Klackons and Alkari and Silicoids - and whatever that newdroid thing is for that matter - still hasn't abated. Some people say it's actually a Darlok propoganda machine, but who knows? (And, frankly, who cares? What does it have to do with my starfleet?) So I'd like to say it, but the trouble is, the stupid 'loks ranked first in those census rankings - we bears ranked third - and now we're getting a brand new droid report saying those same Darloks control six stars!
There'll be no end to this, I suppose. Every time I try to bring up really interesting topics like the implications of trepyon conductivity in a pyroplasmic medium for fuel cell microefficiencies, everyone wanders off to talk about the stupid Darloks and their six planetary systems. Seriously, what's the point?
Well, there's kind of a point, I guess: With everyone so excited about these aliens who own three times as much territory as us, I'm getting lots of interest in my new star fleet. Ever since Munchy ran into my office last month with a fevered look and a sheaf of plans for duralloy armor specifications, my entire team's been hard at work on our latest ship design: While Munchy passes over an auto-repair system and further industrial tech improvements in favor of ways to cut down on our factories' major waste products (his theories should cut them by 40%, I believe - he was doing some kind of dance when he told me; I don't think I've ever seen him so drunk and so happy at the same time) we're assembling new ships to start claiming our own stars!
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Next: Dangerous Meetings
