Sci strolled into the Mess Hall into what looked, at first glance, like some sort of freakish convention of technologists. The whole team, less Emily, who was back at school, and Nick, who was busy, was in the room eating, or talking, or doing something, and every one had an astromech droid following him or her around. Looks like Mike did his job right, he thought.
It had taken him a while, but Sci had finally figured Mike out somewhat. Mike loved to play practical jokes, of course, but he was, at his core, a devoted individual. He could be trusted to do his job quickly, skillfully, and without complaining. He just couldn't be trusted to not have fun. Well, at least he's never touched my books since the first time. Though why was my library door open last night?
He slid into a seat across from Sylvana Lorrdain, looked up, and caught Becki's attention, pointing at both himself and Sylvana, who seemed to not have eaten yet. The morning of a mission was always a pancake feast, made under Becki's watchful eye. She nodded and whisked into the kitchen to whisk pancake batter. Sci turned to Sylvana. "You should try the pancakes."
She nodded, a little giddy. Sci then took on a more formal tone. "Agent Lorrdain, I would like to ask you a serious question."
She noticed the tone in his voice and sat up straight. "What can I do for you, sir?"
"Why were you and Captain Nolan chasing after Lieutenant Cochran with inflatable aliens?"
She swallowed, a little nervous. "I was told to be worried about what you would say..."
"At this point," he assured her, "I'm just wondering what the sequence of events was."
"Well, it's a long story. My brother and I were out in the city, and we came across the aliens...Then he dared me to challenge the first person I saw back at the castle to a duel, and that was Cris--Captain Nolan--"
"Crispy is fine, Syl. I was there when he earned it, several times over."
"Anyway, after Crispy and I dueled a little, he told me that on three, we would rush Psych, who was watching..."
"Oh. So it was just mindless fun?"
She nodded, relieved. "That's all it was. Was I doing something wrong?"
He chuckled. "With the combined brainpower of this team, mindless fun is all we can manage. The day it becomes wrong is the day everybody here, myself included, resigns his or her commission." She laughed lightly. "Anyway, I just wanted to ask what was happening. Oh, and a reminder. All of that is situation-dependent. Before you start in on mindless fun like that, consider where you are and who's there with you."
She smiled. "So that I can save the most effective jokes when there's a formal occasion?"
He smiled. "Welcome to Terra Group." Just then, Becki arrived with two plates of pancakes. The two dove at the food with gusto.
Mike came over to where Sci and Sylvana were eating and tapped Sci on the shoulder. "Your droid awaits, oh Fearful Leader."
Sci smiled and looked up. "You're not going to get demoted so easily, Mike. Lead the way." He got up, wiped his face, and followed Mike over to where a grey R2 unit was waiting.
Mike smiled. "R2-N8, aka Nat, meet Major Scifantasy."
Nat rolled over to Sci. "Pleased to meet you, Major," it said in flawless Basic and a recognizable female voice.
Sci, startled, looked over at Mike. Mike just grinned widely. "I think I'll let Nat tell you about all the little quirks in her quarks."
Sci looked back to Nat, shrugged, and pulled up a chair. "All right, Nat, let's hear it."
"I'm part of an experiment by Industrial Automaton. Some scientists did a study that showed that a female astromech would be more comforting to her human companion. They presented their results to IA, and IA comissioned twenty R2's to be made with female personalities..."
"IA's still making R2's? I thought the line was finished."
"With the fame of Artoo-Detoo, among others, it was decided by Corporate HQ that cancelling the R2 line would be 'Imperially stupid.' Personally, I think they underestimated how stupid it would be."
"I see. Go on." Sci was beginning to like this droid.
"The twenty droids were sent to New Republic HQ to be put through a trial run. Someone in NRI decided that since Terra had only recently gone through a period of social upheaval with regard to gender, it might be an interesting perspective. They sent two female droids here; the other one is assigned to Agent Lorrdain."
"Sylvana?"
"No, Arrek. It makes sense, as the boy has a higher level of pheremones than most Falleen. I was also specially modified to be an interchangable droid."
"A what?"
"Recently, IA began another program, to test the effectiveness of using modular programming instead of making submodels of droids. I have a number of different detachable Memory Expansions, including astrogation, slicing, increased holoprojection, a remote connection to a holocomm, and this one, which is a Basic-speech voder. A second bank contains a number of different voices. I can only be hooked up to one ME at a time, and to switch, I need a human's assistance."
Sci nodded, then sideways at Mike. "Let me guess," he said to Nat. "Mike chose your current voice."
"He said it would be appropriate. He was able to provide enough speech samples so I could reconstruct the voice characteristics."
Sci turned to Mike. "The Professional, Episode I, et cetera?" Mike grinned and nodded. "Well, for a droid named Nat, I guess you could do a lot worse for a voice. Though I can see times where having a mimic is useful."
Nat tweeted in a droid's approximation of a chuckle. "Mike also suggested that I do a bit of reading before we met. You go through a lot of books."
Sci slapped his forehead. "So that's why my library door was ajar. So you're all caught up?"
"And hungry for more."
"As long as they keep writing, I'll keep reading. So where are the extra ME's now?"
Mike coughed. "On the Gaia. You said you wanted to take your droid with you when you went on your errands."
Sci nodded. "And now there's an inhabitant for the astromech port in the cockpit."
Nat chirped contentedly. "Honor to serve, Major. Given what I've seen and heard, that will be the last time you ever hear that. Unless you save my circuits, in which case I'm likely to be grateful for all of five minutes, then go back to berating you."
"Ah, a droid who understands Terra Group. Nice to have you with us, Nat."