On a less philosophical note, we are here to teach ‘newbies’ what we want and need them to know about our respective subjects. My department, Senior Space Cadets, the people who were formerly known as teachers, consists of the world’s best and most knowledgeable in their fields. Except for Ericha; she’s an idiot.
My best friends among these bunch of old-fashioned, highly intellectual, and non-conformist set of involuntarily recruited preceptors, are Osmanthus Blooming and Keemun Gaba. Their knowledge far exceeds mine, and I often deem myself unworthy of their friendship and presence as well as their acceptance of my bad jokes that can be a relentless poke in the eye and, as they well know, serve only to disguise my inferior brain capacities compared to theirs. Still, I am no Ericha; she’s an idiot.
I have been told that I should not be talking in such a way about my new colleague, but let’s consider the facts here for a moment or two. First off, she knows absolutely everything and anything about nothing. She shows off this obvious ignorance more often than one can bear at uncalled for times in places we would rather not have her be seen waddling about with her chins bulging out of her collar. Secondly, the biggest issue with people like Ericha, who know so very little thinking they know so very much, is that it is nigh on impossible to make them realise that their lift does not go all the way to the attic. The wheel is turning, but the hamster is absent, if not dead in its cage.
Oftentimes, debating with Ericha has been compared to playing chess with a pigeon. Fortunately for her, she does not know what chess is nor a pigeon. Both have been sent to Oblivion. Not long before Siobhan O’Rion, our great first world leader, came into power, it became clear that the birds really were spies and chess, as was discovered by the aforementioned philosophers, turned out to be not more than a repetition of moves that could be memorised by any ol’ fool bar Ericha. There was no use for either of them anymore.
Osmanthus, who is quite old for his age and big for his size, teaches Latin and Greek. By some weird turn of events, these languages have become two of the most spoken and written forms of communication throughout the universe. The official story being that when humans were fighting over which piece of dirt belonged to whom, aliens invented space travel, roamed the galaxies, found Earth and their relatively primitive lifeforms, and thought it would be a neat idea to abduct a whole bunch of men and women wearing tunics and togas. For pure scientific purposes, nothing sexual of course, they were probed for days on end inside shiny, shimmering UFOs with lots of flashy lights and futuristic music and then taken to various alien planets in galaxies far, far away. These extraterrestrials found the languages used by – what was later discovered – the Romans and Greek intriguing and useful. They learnt them, taught them, spread them, and the rest is history. So, you can see why his knowledge would be rather useful here on Claudius One.
A tailor had to be flown in specially for the giant one as he was too tall to fit into the standard garment provided by our generous benefactors. His protruding belly has slunk a tad over the years after he started walking up and down the corridors at high speed for fun. Not only that, but he even found pleasure in going to the Sim Deck to pick up heavy items and then decide to put them back down again in the same place. Much to the dismay of the tailor, all this running about and simulated heavy lifting has not made Osmanthus any shorter. Luckily, a bit of cloth on tailoring can be saved while making an outfit for Keemun who is not officially of dwarf size but give it a decade or two and he might just be.
My dear friend and colleague Keemun is a computer whizz who, as mentioned before, is vertically challenged and often confused with the brother from a mother I never had. Despite him being somewhat below my eyelevel, we are both bald and have the same kind of beard that starts under a rather big nose. It goes without saying that a teacher with his set of skills is invaluable on a ship that relies on a sentient AI-model which, to the untrained eye, seems to function in highly irrational ways without the use of any coherent logic. Keemun will tell you that we are wrong. if we think that it seems as such, the short one, with his well-trained eye, years of experience and mindboggling knowledge, knows it to be a fact. This, however, does not mean that he can decipher every absurd step or decision Claud takes, but he does know how to shut the programmes up. This is a relief to many, and a pain to Claud. He has quite frequently been made to yield to Keemun’s superior capacities in handling the software. I will never get used to a sobbing robot.
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