Kyper Files 011

Morning, or what passed for morning, came. Kyper and I got up, we took care of our morning details and had breakfast. I picked up the tablet and saw that someone had sent me a message on the inner network. I opened it.

“You are required at a debriefing and welcome package in Conference room 05.”

“Great, politics before coffee,” I muttered. Kyper merowed as though in comment. I sighed and got dressed. I still hadn't found the laundry. I dressed in what I could and then we headed for the halls to find the room. I managed to find 03, but I was still lost when one of the lab coats walked past. Kyper caught a sock and I glared at him. He cleaned his paw innocently and the lab coat huffed.

“Excuse him, his manners seem to be lost. Where is Conference room 05?” I asked. They pointed in a generic direction and turned and continued on the path they were already on. I followed the direction indicated.

I found the room to find a suit, a lab coat, and a generic waiting. I felt like I was walking onto a joke and wondered who the lawyer was.

“Please sit Ms. Hale,” the suit said. I raised an eyebrow and sat down. Kyper jumped in my lap.

“Ah I'd heard there was a cat, someone said he was named after the Kepler belt,” the generic said.

“His name is Kyper,” I responded.

“Are you sure you don't…”

“No, I don't,” I said, cutting her off.

“Anyway, I assume you've been given a tour of the facilities and shown to your apartment in the last couple days?” the suit asked.

“You could say that,” I responded.

“Good, you're in charge.”

“Excuse me what?”

“You're the head of security, you answer to Earth if there's anything necessary for us to intervene. Essentially, you're to save the eggheads from themselves.”

“How long am I here?” I asked.

“We cannot guarantee a viable return window until after the blackout, and then it's up to the instruments and the scientists time constraints.”

“And then there is your contract to consider. Should you back out, I'm afraid the consequences would be catastrophic. Think …never going to recover,” the woman said slyly. Found the lawyer. Didn't like her. Kyper hissed. Neither did he.

“Fine, then I have necessities. Kyper needs access to food and adequate litter. And I don’t mean the cheapest available. I will gladly pay out of pocket for it myself but we are a little short on stores here. I’m sure you have vets in this place. I also want over ride capabilities on anything. If it even makes Kyper’s whisker twitch at 2 am and we are on the other side of the planet I want authority to shut it down. I also want the ability to red flag experiments."

"The cat supplies we can give on, but we can’t do it during black out. The scientists operate on a need to know basis and sometimes you don’t need to know.”

"Then I cannot do this job and you’re breaking your own contract by not providing the tools I need to do it.” 

“We will see what we can do,” the suit said. The lab coat studied his notes and the lawyer muttered under her breath.

“What's this blackout?” I asked.

“Every three months we lose direct connection with Earth. A vessel is supposed to show up for inspection and check in during the noncommunications period and we are resupplied before and after the blackout. Length of blackout can vary due to spatial disturbances, gases and so forth but on average it's rarely long enough to cause real problems,” the lab coat explained. I translated that to mean they don't have a clue how long it lasts because they never timed it or it's not his department, and they had no definition of problem.

“Why is this position necessary now?”

“That has been classified,” the suit said before the lab coat could answer.

“Not like they won't tell her,” he countered. The suit rolled his eyes.

“An incident occurred in which a scientist and an experiment went missing. We would like to prevent other such ‘incidents’,” the suit said.

“Well, without the ability to act when I need to, I'm not sure I could, but we will see what we can do,” I responded. I could almost hear the teeth grinding in the room. Kyper headbutted my hand and I scratched his ears waiting.

“We can make some …concessions,” the suit finally relented. I didn't expect to actually get any but at least if they whined I could throw it back in their faces later. 

“I want my door fixed too,” I said.

“Your door fixed?” came the response.

“Apparently IT needs to make an adjustment,” I answered.

“You can fix that yourself just flip the main breaker in your apartment and let the power bleed out of it, give it like 10 seconds or something, when you turn it back on, there should be a light blinking on the door panel, just put in the code you want and hit star three times,” the suit said. I stared at the lab coat who shrugged.

“Who knew,” he answered.