Commissioner Gert 1 (Patreon)

Hey guys, I want to thank you for being so patient. I've been ridiculously busy here, so before I get to the next scene, here's a quick little recap of the chaos in my life:

As I've mentioned, I lost my job. I thought this would give me a ton of free time, but it hasn't! Instead of working all day, now I'm looking for work every day. I've interviewed with four different companies and they all sound eager to hire me, but I haven't actually seen a single offer letter. I have savings (more on that in a second), but I'm afraid to spend it. What if the offers don't come and I'm unemployed for an extended period? It seems safer to hold onto my savings and spend it as slowly as possible at least until I can be certain that I have a new job.

What is it that I want to spend my savings on? A couple things, actually. For one, one of my windows shattered recently. I ordered a new one and it's here and ready, but when I found out that I lost my job, I asked the contractor to put the work on hold until I found a new job. So, I've just been living with a shattered window ever since.

Next, my HVAC went out. This old house has two units, so the upstairs is still heated, but I do all my writing in the basement (now huddled around a space heater). I had a guy come in to quote it, but he came over the day that I got laid off! Sheesh. And if that's not bad enough, now the other unit is making a horrible squealing sound like it's going to die at any moment.

I've also been busy reviewing two audiobooks with my VA, Rafe. That's finally done now, but it's taken a tremendous amount of time.

What else? Oh yeah, I agreed to give a talk at MFF in under two weeks, and I'm just now writing it.

Then, there' Thanksgiving, and traveling, and I don't even know what else. I can handle thins, but to say that I'm stressed doesn't even scratch the surface of the situation!

Anyhow, @ArcadeDragon made a wonderful suggestion for a scene with Gert.

———

Gert entered the bridge with a confused look on his ears. “Captain? My shift isn’t until tomorrow…” he started to say, but his words trailed off when he saw a krakun’s face on the bridge’s main screen.

He didn’t recognize the creature’s scale pattern and—as a geroo—wasn’t a perfect judge of how krakun “looked”, but he suspected the gigantic reptile was a younger male, employed, but without any notable status. He looked … tidy, at best.

When Ateri glanced his way, the subcommander put up a paw to shield his muzzle and mouthed, “Who’s that?”

“That?” asked the captain, glancing back to the screen. “That’s no one. I’ve been trying to call Planetary Acquisitions, but I can’t get past the automated call answering ’bot.”

“It’s an A.I.?” gasped Gert as he came the rest of the way onto the bridge. He stared up at the pixels on the screen, looking for flaws or rigidity in the animation, but he couldn’t spot any. “But Krakuntec outlawed A.I.s millennia ago!”

Ateri crossed his arms. “No, this thing’s too stupid to be an A.I. Watch this,” he said. Then, looking up at the screen, he asked, “Let me talk to whatever nincompoop selected our new commissioner.”

“I wouldn’t know who that would be, sir,” said the krakun on the screen with a frown, “but if you can tell me the krakun’s name and a compelling reason why you should be able to speak with them, I’ll connect you.”

Gert chuckled. “Sir? Yeah, that breaks the whole illusion right there, a krakun calling a geroo, ‘sir’,” he said, wiggling his fingers as if he were performing some sort of magic act. “Wait a moment! New commissioner? Don’t tell me the company actually promoted that old lizard, Sarsuk!”

“Quite the opposite,” said Ateri, struggling to keep a smile off his ears. “They had him executed for treason.”

Gert’s eyes went wide for a moment, but only that. With a shrug, he took his usual seat. “I have no idea what he did, but I see the company disciplines commissioners as harshly as the commissioners discipline their captains.” Then, he muttered, “Glad I’m not a commissioner.”

Someone on the other side of the bridge stifled a yarp, but when both Gert and Ateri turned to look, the unknown culprit was acting busy and couldn’t be identified.

“Yes, well,” Captain Ateri said slowly before finally turning back to Gert. “The problem isn’t Sarsuk’s execution. The problem is that clearly one of the company’s databases got corrupted, and some automated system has assigned our new commissioner. Nobody in the company seems to have spotted the error, and this worthless call answering ’bot won’t connect me to anyone with a pulse so we can get the mistake rectified.”

Gert’s ears smiled. “A corrupted database? Don’t tell me they’ve assigned his password string as our new commissioner, or we’ll be filing reports with a krakun named ‘Password1!’ for the rest of our lives.”

“No, it’s worse than that, I’m afraid,” sighed Ateri.

“Who then?” As the communications officer, Gert paid more attention to krakun politics than probably any other geroo on board, but with Sarsuk dead, even Gert probably wouldn’t need more than one paw to list off the names of every living krakun he knew of. “Don’t tell me they made the emperor our new commissioner. Or the CEO?”

At this, every member of the bridge crew turned to stare at Gert. He was clearly missing something obvious. “What? Did they assign Sarsuk to be his own successor, and now we have to report to a ghost?”

Ateri’s ears frowned. “It’s you, Gert. They made you the new commissioner over Sarsuk’s old fleet.”

Gert stared at the one-eyed geroo in silence for the longest while, trying to puzzle out the punchline to Ateri’s joke. “What?” he asked, giving up. “I can’t be commissioner.”

“Obviously,” agreed the captain, “but your name is on all the paperwork somehow. They’re expecting you to inspect all twenty-seven of Sarsuk’s ships.”

“How the heck am I supposed to do that?”

“I have no idea,” said Captain Ateri.

With a roll of his eyes, Gert raised his voice and spoke to the krakun on the screen. “Hey, call-answering-’bot, this is Commissioner Gert,” he said with a chuckle, “I’d like to speak with my boss. Mind putting me through?”

“Of course, sir,” said the krakun. “What is your boss’s name?”

Gert and Ateri shared a glance and a shrug. “I just found out about my promotion a moment ago,” said Gert. “You mind looking that up for me?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the krakun. “Org-charts are company secrets, and I’m not allowed to access them.”

“We should ignore these instructions,” said Ateri. “They’re obviously erroneous, so we should just keep doing what we’re doing until the company figures out that they’ve screwed up.”

Gert frowned. “You’re trying to get me in trouble for not doing my job.”

“Be serious, Gert. It’s not your job,” said the captain. “Even the krakun aren’t unreasonable enough to get mad at you for not playing along with an obvious error.”

“I’m not convinced,” said the younger male. He pulled the strand from his shoulder and scrolled through a document far too quickly for him to read it. “Well, looking over your ship’s report—that I wrote—and wow! This looks amazing, Captain Ateri. You’ve done a great job. I’m gonna put a gold star down by your name. I think you’re really going places with this company.”

“Cute, but enough with the sass, Subcommander,” Ateri sighed. “This is a real problem, and you’re liable to get in trouble if you go acting like a commissioner when it’s obviously a mistake.”

“Hey, call-answering-’bot, Commissioner Gert again,” he said to the screen. “Look, I need to inspect the other ships in my fleet, but I’m stranded aboard the White Flower II without my shuttle, so I can’t. Is there any way you could send a shuttle up to me on autopilot?”

“Let me check on that, sir,” said the krakun ’bot.

“Gert,” said Ateri, finally raising his voice a little. “Knock this off, or I will put you on report.”

“Hang on, Captain, let’s just see what happens here,” said Gert, raising his paws in supplication. “If they won’t give me a shuttle, then I obviously can’t do the job. There’s no way for me to go inspect the other ships in Sarsuk’s fleet. But if they will, then maybe I could do some good…?”

“Gert… I’m warning you.”

“Commissioner Gert,” said the krakun on-screen, suddenly, “I’m so sorry to keep you waiting. A shuttle has been dispatched to your location. Please check with the slave crew at the shuttle bay to ensure that they are ready to accommodate it.”

Gert smiled with wide ears. “You know, Ateri, despite the fact that all of our ships have been manufactured identically … I’ve always wanted to see just what they’re like.”

“That’s it,” said Ateri. “Gert, you’re on report.”

With a grin, Gert tilted his head toward the one-eyed geroo. “That’s no way to speak to your boss, Ateri… Especially not so shortly after I just put a gold star by your name.”

With a wave to all the wide eyes staring at him, Gert turned to leave. “I’ll be back in a couple weeks for my next inspection. Oh, and Ateri,” he said back over his shoulder, “do see if engineering can do something about that air handling unit that’s located just past my bedroom. It makes an awful squeal every time it starts up.”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K5smcnm6PISMeHQhu7Mq5ZadoHbESlPbOYhPnIkP1AM/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?