A Spaceman

Chapter 3--Extraordinary Men

"How are the little hooligans?" Lt. Jordan asks, as he punches commands on the computer in front of him, changing the arrangement of documents on the screen.

"Happy now. Remember how fun it was being a hooligan?" I ask, sticking the distribution of uniforms flash drive into his hard drive.

"No, as I recall it was stressful, I don't think I giggled half that much," he says, not looking up, "I've reviewed their scores."

"And?" I ask.

"And two are going straight back to the Academy after we train them up, thought I'd let you pick, see which one you want to mentor then I'll make Qui—Lt. Starr take the other one," he says. I wonder at the slip up. Almost nobody calls Starr by his first name, and I didn't even know he and Jordan knew each other that well. They are close to the same age, maybe they were in the same class.

"I thought Starr wasn't doing that," I say frowning.

"He is, we have a shortage, and since you came through therapy all right the powers that be thought they'd let him abuse another innocent child," he says, with a dry laugh. He is usually sarcastic, or very cynical. I am never sure.

"He's not going to like that," I say. He was loathe to train me, and he picked me out of my entire class. I still wasn't sure why. He said it was because I didn't talk as much as the others, but I don't see how he could have known that.

"No, I know, but that's not our concern is it?' he says, taking two pieces of paper off the board, "Want first pick?"

"Since you're offering, hell yes," I say. I have mentored a few students before, but only in six month rotations, which they had instituted after I had completed my training, and after Starr's next recruit went actively insane after seven months.

"There's just the two, a boy and girl. The boy calls himself Anthony Beckham, the girl is Clarisse Slaughter," he says, looking at the papers carefully, "Neither have particularly staggering scores, but well enough to pass."

"Clarisse? I met her, she's sensitive and pudgy and cries when she's upset---they can't put her with Starr he'd eat her alive," I sigh.

"Then you take her," Lt Jordan says, unsympathetically.

"I don't like taking girls, the last three girls I had developed crushes on me," I say.

"I fail to see how that is anybody else's problem," he says.

"Because they get all silly and I have to have them moved," I say.

"Nobody told you your last boy also developed a crush on you?" he asks, raising his eyebrow and smiling coyly.

"Oh shut up, that isn't true," I say.

"It is as well, I have his notes from his little chat with the resident quack," he says.

"You can't read people's medical files," I say.

"Looks like I did, God what do you think I do all day in records?" he asks.

"Have you read mine?" I ask.

"Oh yes um 'dearie me why are my sparkling blue eyes and dashing good looks such a curse?'" he quotes, in an annoying impersonation of me.

"I never said that," I say.

"You did," he says.

"I was only saying---something about the hooligans giggling about me, and it was only because the quack expects us to say something about stresses of the job," I mutter.

"Which one?" he asks, holding out the two papers, "Come on, I haven't got all day."

"You've got exactly all day, you don't do anything else in here, I'm probably the only person you'll see all day," I say.