Air Port Convention – 21/Aug/2012
Brains was unhappy. Yes, he knew he was doing 'good work'. Yes, Uran approved. But, he was quite miffed at being turned out of his own bed.
He considered the "SS Champ" his second home, after his Lunar one. The dower house, back on Earth, that was Brainless' now. Even before he'd admitted it, he'd been nudged out onto the "SS Champ"; now that was a hospital ship.
When he got upset like this, Brains was inclined to retire from the world, and work. Here he was in Serenity Valley, in the "SS Gee Gee", with all the supplies that had been in the Champs' hold. Hmm. The con buildings were looking pretty wrecked. Wasn't there a Morian freighter nearby that owed him a few favours?
---
"Work, it helped keep you sane", thought Brains. He was only one of quite a few people working on repairing the con buildings. The Morians had pitched-on, and there were a full set of twelve bimbots, in neat overalls, with hard hats. The Gibson Girls were doing the heavy lifting, and, he thought Uran was around, somewhere.
While the bimbots were a bit rough, early on, particularly when their controlling Gibson Girl was trying to do something complex, they quickly smoothed out. Initially they were synchronised, in an eerie way, then they developed the little hitches and pauses, the looking at each other to check things. Brains knew the Girls were pretty good, but they were improving at an amazing rate.
The main thing was to fix any structural risks, and Brains was using roughly the equivalent of battlesteel for that. So far he was avoiding the more exotic materials he tended to work with – common super materials were good enough. The next task was infrastructure, once there was no more reliance on forcefields just to keep people alive. Power, lighting, air circulation, that sort of thing – hard-wired communications, temperature control, water and sewage was unfortunately secondary.
Brains had learned a lot of tricks with waved mylar over the years – shaping it was almost second nature by now. He was focused on invisible mending of the walls, and floor and ceiling, of course. Where possible he was matching the acoustic properties, though he had to make guesses in a few places – there was so little original structure to copy. Waved aero-gel with tweaked properties fixed most things.
After a couple of days work there was very little visible damage left. Brains had been processing con building carpets, through a scaled-up version of his Auto Tailor. Fortunately he'd access to good music libraries, to keep the machine happy. Others had been working on fixtures and fittings – things were still a bit sparse in places, but it was looking pretty good.
Uran had been recording the remaining con program streams for Brains. She also claimed that she was asking the awkward questions he would have done, but, he wasn't convinced. Doctor Venus had discharged almost all her patients, and the ones she had left were mostly Boskone, who'd featured well down in her triage priorities. The Gibson Girls had gone over towards providing security, which after all was their real job, and only had to foil three escape attempts – they weren't bothering counting the bribery or other coercion.
Everything should be done for the con closing ceremonies, and the final, local, funeral services that were to follow. One way or another, Brains knew they'd be picking up the pieces from this for years.
But, he'd made new friends, renewed old ones, and he couldn't claim it hadn't been a memorable con.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind
Brains was unhappy. Yes, he knew he was doing 'good work'. Yes, Uran approved. But, he was quite miffed at being turned out of his own bed.
He considered the "SS Champ" his second home, after his Lunar one. The dower house, back on Earth, that was Brainless' now. Even before he'd admitted it, he'd been nudged out onto the "SS Champ"; now that was a hospital ship.
When he got upset like this, Brains was inclined to retire from the world, and work. Here he was in Serenity Valley, in the "SS Gee Gee", with all the supplies that had been in the Champs' hold. Hmm. The con buildings were looking pretty wrecked. Wasn't there a Morian freighter nearby that owed him a few favours?
---
"Work, it helped keep you sane", thought Brains. He was only one of quite a few people working on repairing the con buildings. The Morians had pitched-on, and there were a full set of twelve bimbots, in neat overalls, with hard hats. The Gibson Girls were doing the heavy lifting, and, he thought Uran was around, somewhere.
While the bimbots were a bit rough, early on, particularly when their controlling Gibson Girl was trying to do something complex, they quickly smoothed out. Initially they were synchronised, in an eerie way, then they developed the little hitches and pauses, the looking at each other to check things. Brains knew the Girls were pretty good, but they were improving at an amazing rate.
The main thing was to fix any structural risks, and Brains was using roughly the equivalent of battlesteel for that. So far he was avoiding the more exotic materials he tended to work with – common super materials were good enough. The next task was infrastructure, once there was no more reliance on forcefields just to keep people alive. Power, lighting, air circulation, that sort of thing – hard-wired communications, temperature control, water and sewage was unfortunately secondary.
Brains had learned a lot of tricks with waved mylar over the years – shaping it was almost second nature by now. He was focused on invisible mending of the walls, and floor and ceiling, of course. Where possible he was matching the acoustic properties, though he had to make guesses in a few places – there was so little original structure to copy. Waved aero-gel with tweaked properties fixed most things.
After a couple of days work there was very little visible damage left. Brains had been processing con building carpets, through a scaled-up version of his Auto Tailor. Fortunately he'd access to good music libraries, to keep the machine happy. Others had been working on fixtures and fittings – things were still a bit sparse in places, but it was looking pretty good.
Uran had been recording the remaining con program streams for Brains. She also claimed that she was asking the awkward questions he would have done, but, he wasn't convinced. Doctor Venus had discharged almost all her patients, and the ones she had left were mostly Boskone, who'd featured well down in her triage priorities. The Gibson Girls had gone over towards providing security, which after all was their real job, and only had to foil three escape attempts – they weren't bothering counting the bribery or other coercion.
Everything should be done for the con closing ceremonies, and the final, local, funeral services that were to follow. One way or another, Brains knew they'd be picking up the pieces from this for years.
But, he'd made new friends, renewed old ones, and he couldn't claim it hadn't been a memorable con.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind