Chapter 9
Journal #545
Modern communications are a wonderful thing. They allow persons to wait endless hours for the download of information that the possession of a few choice reference books would put at their fingertips. They make it possible for salesmen and bill collectors to harrass their customers during the dinner hour or at other inconvenient times without the least risk of a poke in the snoot. They allow the young of both sexes to carry on endless conversations, if the term may be applied to a verbal exchange almost entirely devoid of actual content. All these are good things, especially if one is a stockholder in the communications cartels that provide these dubious services. Others will no doubt consider them in a less positive light.
Curiously, the petty annoyances of a civilized world are often precisely those things one most fervently desires when one is roughing it in the wilds of Zenobia, and they fail to function in the accustomed manner.
Word of Major Botchup’s arrival spread like wildfire through Omega Company. The new commanding officer had commandeered the office set aside for Phule, then summoned Lieutenants Armstrong and Rembrandt for a closed-door executive conference with him and his adjutant, Second Lieutenant Snipe. This left Brandy with the unpleasant task of trying to inform Captain Jester of Legion headquarters’ latest stratagem to counteract the innovations he’d instituted with Omega Company.
As usual, Comm Central had already heard the news. After all, Mother’s job was to monitor all communications and make sure that information got passed to those who needed it most. So when Brandy came into the equipment-crowded room, Mother had already taken it upon her own initiative to contact the absent captain. Tusk-anini was standing behind the desk, looking over Mother’s shoulder with an unusually deep frown as Brandy swept through the door.