Justric

The Last Kings of Orion

(Laughing) I have missed you, Lillian!

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Lillian - I blame my one high school teacher. You see, our school district's budget was severely strained when I was in school, so they hired this British educator who handle both the advanced literature classes and the home economics classes. She loved to teach the cooking part of the latter, especially how to make sauces and cremes. So you could say that I get my love of baking puns from my anglaise teacher...

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Thank you, thank you. (Bows). There were a great many more baking related puns that I could have explored, but it was the yeast I could do not to rise to the occasion.

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(I'm sorry, I can't resist)

Careful, or she might end up with a bun in the oven.

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(Right! Scrapping the other Secondary character and trying again! So in the fine tradition of Scruffy, Rimmer and Lister, Mike and Darby, and Adam Quark, I give you...)



Name: Jack Pumphrey

Gender: Male

Age: 26

Eyes: Hazel Green

Hair: Reddish-Brown

Occupation/Position: Handyman / General Custodian

Background: Originally born in Petty Cove, Newfoundland, Jack’s family moved to Wyoming when he was seventeen… by which point it was too late to get the Newfie out of him. He was raised on a mental diet of hockey, Stompin’ Tom Connors, and The Red Green Show, none of which were actually bad although it had made him (again like his forefathers) a rather easy going fellow. Jack has never been one to worry. His father and uncle and grandfather were all fix it men and Jack was raised to the same vocation. Lawn mower not working? Take it to the Pumphreys! Need a cheap plumbing fix done right? Call one of the Pumphreys! Got an antique radio that needs new vacuum tubes? Check with old man Pumphrey! Need someone to scrub down the boat? Pass a few bucks to that Pumphrey kid! They were a family made up almost entirely of jacks-of-all-trades and maids-of-all-work. It suited their personalities, their lifestyles, and them. Not a perfect family, but at least it was one that functioned and you knew where you stood.

Only with the fisheries coming back to strength after decades of restrictions and heavy limits, people were buying new and more complicated gadgets. Jack and his family couldn’t fix these new fangled flat screen televisions with their circuits and processors and all that, and trying to figure out a kludge to repair a busted GPS locator… signal… beacon… thing… Well, that was right out! They had their loyal customers, but there simply wasn’t enough work to support the family.

The move to Wyoming was prompted by a second cousin who was starting an antique restoration business and was looking to expand. Nepotism the fine thing that it is, he hired Jack, his father, and his uncle to come down and help out. And they made a pretty good deal off of it. They settled down and only seemed a trifle odd to their new neighbors; Petty Cove had been more or less a bastion of stereotypical Newfoundlanders. Americans trying to follow the Pumphrey’s convoluted logic and grammar were often exasperated as they were charmed at the same time.

Then came the Change. Things kept getting more and more desperate until one night everyone in town was rounded by the military and taken to some secret place up in the mountains. People from all around the countryside were being brought in and processed as quickly as possible by a small army of clerks before being shown to emergency shelters. “Do you have any medical conditions or injuries?” “What’s your age?” “Are you married?” and (seemingly most important) “Do you have any special skills, certifications, or licenses?”

Jack remembers standing there at that table, yes, sir, staring the young woman full in the face and thinking his answer through before saying, “Well, miss? I can try just about anything you tell me to. Can’t promise I’ll do it well, but there’s some things I might do better than most only I won’t know what they are until you have me do them, b’y. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, you see, it’s that duct tape is the handyman’s friend. So you can ask me about robots and computers and astro-whatnots if you’d like, and I’m more than willing to take ‘em apart and have a look at their guts. But if were me asking you? I’d want to know if you can clean a toilet or mop a floor. Because theren’t no certifications or licenses for that, and it don’t take no special skill, and so I doubt it appears on that there list in front of you.”

The result? General Custodian, Third Shift. His father, mother, uncle, and aunt were all designated sleepers because of their age, while his second cousin (Sam) was made a Custodian on First Shift.

It’s simple but honest work, Jack found. Cleaning, mopping, doing basic maintenance that the Engineers wouldn’t bother with, helping with laundry, sorting recyclables… He’s not overly depressed about the Earth being lost. In his laid back manner, Jack realizes it was just another home. And now humanity was going to have a new one.

On shift, Jack can usually be seen strolling from one job to another, pushing a cart or carrying a toolbox. A short briarwood pipe (his grandfather’s) is usually clenched between his teeth, unlit of course due to regulations. Since waking, he has seemed a little preoccupied with hunting down spare tubing and sugar. At the moment, however, he's received notification that he has to go clean vomit out of one of the holographic projector circuit panels before Engineering will even touch it...

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Oh, Lillian... I am in love! She is beautiful!

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<redacted>

Not having any luck with a secondary character, so saying to hell with it.

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Hob grinned widely and closed his eyes as he wrapped his arms about her waist to return the hug in full. Her slight body was warm in his hands, he could feel the curve of her flesh against his suit and smell whatever perfume she had chosen to emulate. There was weight to her, substance! The system's feedback sensors told him there was pressure from her arms around his neck, and his nerves responded in kind. It was with a slow reluctance that the NI-Tech lowered her down.

"More an eternity for you than me, I imagine. And does your father know you've got beer in the fridge, young lady?" he snorted as he headed for the fridge. In the process, he triggered a mental command and made his three piece plaid suit vanished away to be instantly replaced with cargo shorts, a red and black Hawaiian camp shirt, and open toes beach sandals. The black fez with its red tassel remained. She had chosen the sea side bungalow, and Hob was more than willing to play along with the illusion. OLGA had done a great job in synthesizing the smell of the sea! Grabbing a bottle from the fridge, he allowed himself a bit of machismo and flicked the bottle cap off with one thumb. To his delight, the cap went spinning across the floor. "My last eternity was several real time years of nightmares while locked up in a coffin. Which was apparently a picnic compared to the hell everyone else went through during Second Shift. Cryotech murdering sleepers, Jean-Paul going nuts, Amber damn near crashing the system, Sung-Pak locking up like that? And who the fuck thought it was a good idea to put Amber in with Sung-Pak anyway?"

Sitting down in a bamboo chair with soft white cushions, he crossed one leg over the other knee and looked at her. Hob took a careful swallow. The cold brew trickled down his throat, the bubbles fizzing against his tongue and teeth as he lowered the bottle. Hashing over the tragedies of Second Shift was pointless. There was nothing he could do about the past event, although since by all accounts First Shift hadn't any problems at all Jean-Pauls' gang looked like disaster on legs. Besides, there was a pretty lady in front of him! One who was obviously as glad to see him as he was to see her! Hob doubted that with everything going on during Second Shift any of the other NI-techs would have bothered to pay the AI a visit. To most of the NI-Techs, OLGA was the queen of creepy in their creepy little world. Hob, on the other hand, look a much more pragmatic view of things. He was lonely, she was lonely. It was a friendship that worked well for them both!

"You do some upgrades since I last saw you?" It always paid to compliment one's hostess. Besides, in a world where OLGA could be anything she wanted, making note on her looks alone just didn't do her justice. With a grin and a wink towards her, Hob took another pull on the bottle and savored the taste and feel of it. Screw reality. Out there he was piece of machinery, something that the rest of the humans had to regretfully put through hell so they all could live while searching for a new home. In here? Hob was more alive than he had been since the Change first started back on Earth. It was like watching standard television for most of your life on a grainy black and white set, and then being placed in front of a wide-screen UltraHD monitor with 3D surround sound. Was it any wonder that he preferred spending time down there with OLGA? He knew the other NI-techs were against him spending too much time with the doctor's creation, worried that it might induce any number of psychosis that the techs were vulnerable to. But were there really worse things than losing your mind and going to heaven?

"Most folks are supposed to be having a day or two of downtime right now, although I suspect there'll still be a few busybodies who want to get straight to work." Annette. Charlie. Singh. Yuriko. he commended silently to himself. Not Tyson, though, as the boy was never in any hurry to do anything but daydream... which was probably why he was one of the best NI-Techs, actually. "Still, should give us time for a quick vacation!"

The simulated vacations with OLGA were always fun. True she was the one who generated the vistas and locations from her own databanks and knew everything about the sites that her memory held. But Hob added a human element, showing it to the girl with different eyes. Usually, he would conjure up a canvas and pigments, going through the motions of actually painting the scene as he saw it for her to enjoy. Sometimes he would compose music instead, or do a virtual sculpture that he would give to her. It was his way of relating to OLGA, as well as a way of teaching her a more human way of looking at the world. Granted, it was Hob's way of looking at thing. Still, it was a start. "Where did you want to go? Paris? Tibet? Scotland? Morocco? Or did you want to just stay here and enjoy the ocean for a bit?"

Never Lose Your Hat!

The inside of the room was illuminated by the same soft glow that lit the rest of the below deck rooms, light filling the air from unseen sources that provided just enough to see by. And what there was to see!

The cabin was luxuriously decorated with the popular fashion of some two or three centuries past. The walls were lined with walnut book cases whose delicate looking but sturdy construction matched the massive desk in the center of the room. A great deal of time and effort had gone into making the furniture. The surfaces were all covered in an artistic design of carvings, wood and mother of pearl inlays, and bas relief that gave the impression the wood was not only somehow alive but actually flowering with vines that twisted and turned along the legs and the edges. All of the shelves were filled with books. A nook in the rear of the cabin revealed a raised platform nestled between the shelves, a small loft that looked as though it once served as a small but cozy bed.

Dust covered the room, making the once lush carpet beneath their feet all the thicker. This compartment had not been flooded, that much was obvious! Even the books looked in fair condition for all their supposed age! Better at least than the man who sat behind the desk. Or rather, what was left of him.

Dressed in the elegant fashions of times long past, the corpse was seated in a high leather chair behind the desk. The beard on his face made it evident that it was most likely a “he.” More mummy than skeleton, a wineglass rested in one cupped hand while the other hand rested casually upon the top of the bare desk. Small spectacles rested on his forehead. It was as though he had pushed them up there away from his eyes, taken a drink, and calmly died. The sight of him just sitting three and seemingly looking right at Ivy and Jötz gave the room a creepy, haunted feeling that made even the Jaeger take a step back. Jötz had seen plenty of dead people in his time. He’d even created a few! But there were some scenes that even a howling, furry monster of destruction simply had to shake his head at and walk away.

Only he already knew the chances of Ivy walking away as well were slim to none.

Jötz raised his eyes to scan the rest of the room, frowning as he wondered where all of the gold and weapons and crazy-crazy death fun he had expected were. “Dey say he vas buried mit his treasure,” the furry monsterman whispered to the Spark. “So vhere ist all da shiny shtuff?”

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(In a sing-song voice) Henry's got a secret!

I love Josey! I swear I could hear his voice in my head as I was reading his lines!