I’m almost at the point where I want to say fuck it and sign it so I can spend the rest of my life trying to learn how to fucking cook.
What the actualfuckis wrong with me, anyway, that I can land a goddamned cargo freighter damn near on the head of a pin, but I cannot cook anything other than scrambled freaking eggs?
Normally, when I’m calculating and programming a jump, there’s nothing in the world that can distract me.
Today, as I sit alone in my bunk and study my console, I find myself completely unable to focus on anything Ishouldbe focusing on.
Because there’s Olarte, not just their egg in my butt, but their soulrightin the center of my soul.
Ten weeks until I can see Olarte again.
Minimum.
Ten weeks until I can talk to them in real time.
Ten weeks until I can inhale and their scent fills my lungs even as they curl their body around mine, and—
Fuck.
Now I’m hard, and I don’t have time to sit here jerking off with my new and improved cock. I have to get these calculations completed and program our course.
Besides, jerking off seems sort of an empty gesture now, when I think about who’s waiting for me.
I actuallyhavesomeone waiting for me, which is a strange, new thing that I love.
I want to walk in the forest with them, sit down to dinner with their family.
Hang out on their sofa and talk with them, or at least listen to them talking and telling family stories.
I don’t think I’m going to have a difficult time walking away from my career after all. The captain might get pissed off at me, but before we hit our destination, I’m going to break it to him that he needs to find a new ether-jump nav by the time we return to Pfahrn.
Once we return to Pfahrn, I’m going to lock the ether-jump system, file my resignation, walk away from this ship, and head toward my future.
The ship and its future will be someone else’s problem.
Olarte will just have to get used to that.
* * * *
Once we’re released from the station’s control tower, I switch on the aft view on my cabin’s vid screen and wipe away my tears.
That’s my future growing smaller behind us.
Yeah, this will have to be my last trip. I can’t keep doing this to myself. If Olarte really doesn’t want me to quit, then they’ll just have to quit their job and travel with me. I can get a travel waiver for a spouse. Hey, I’m good with retiring. I’m still at the top of my game, still unbeaten in certification scores. That’s a win, right?
Only after I have myself pulled together do I head to the bridge to program in the course for the ether-jump. We’ll be in the clear zone in a couple of hours and able to jump-in. The week-long jump periods seem to be the perfect formula for this ship.
The captain turns the conn over to me as I start counting down, with McMurtry down in Engineer monitoring everything there.
“Ether-jump commencing on my mark,” I announce over the ship’s PA system as my stylus hovers over the button. “Five…four…three…two…one…mark.”
I hit the button and feel the slight wobble that instructors in the academy insist is just in our heads, but I know McMurtry can feel it, too.
Just like that, we’re in the jump.
As I settle into monitoring our jump, I walk my stylus through my fingers while I study my screens. If I had to explain the quantum math to someone who has zero training in this, it’d probably sound like I’m speaking a whole different language to them.
Because I am. It’s numbers and theory and trying to visualize the universe not in three dimensions, or even four, but in multiple dimensions.
