Disclaimer: See Ch. 1

When he woke, Allan was back in his room.  He wondered vaguely how he'd gotten there.  It was dark and he could hear voices and soft laughter, muffled by distance and closed doors.  He wondered if he should get up, be doing something, but remembering what had happened last time decided against it.  He rolled over and went back to sleep.

_______

The door clanked open, and there was Twitch.  "You ready to go?" he asked in a nasal English accent.

"Huh?"

"Your training starts today.  Didn't anyone tell you?"

"Uh, no."

"Well, get up.  We gotta get started.  You got five minutes."

He turned and left.  Allan rolled out of bed, surprised to find his body working properly.  He saw a tray of food lying next to the bed, and managed to wolf down about a plate of goopy stuff – which tasted no better now he was feeding himself – before heading out the door.  He still felt slow and weak, but he could walk, and managed to make it all the way to the ladder.

Pixel appeared at the door of the mess and saw him looking up the ladder, wondering if he had the strength.  She grinned manically.

"Come on kid, you can do it.  It's not that far," she said encouragingly.  "I'll catch you if you fall."

Twitch's face appeared at the top of the ladder. "You coming, kid?"

He started to climb.  Halfway up he started to shake, but Pixel pinched his backside, sending him scrambling all the way, landing on all fours at the top.  Twitch helped him up.  "Don't mind her.  She's just a bloody flirt."

He guided the shaking boy over to the hot seat.  "Don't worry, you won't have to move from here for the rest of the day."

"I thought I was meant to be training?"

"You are.  It's good fun.  We plug the information and skills you need straight into your head."

Allan thought about that as Twitch buzzed around him.  "Do I get a say in this?"

Twitch paused and looked down at him.  "Not really.  We all have to do it, and it's not that bad.  Doesn't hurt."

He looked at the spike that Twitch was wielding, waiting to insert into the back of his head.  "Okay.  Fine."

He shuddered as the spike slid into this skull.  Tensed for pain, he was surprised that sensation, while overwhelmingly intense, was not entirely unpleasant.  Information surged through his head, filling his thoughts.  It was like a flood of data that completely suppressed all higher brain functions.  He couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't move.  In the one corner of his mind still left to him, he noted that his subconscious was taking the information and sorting it, carefully keeping the flood just low enough that his heart still beat.

Finally the tide abated.  He opened his eyes without remembering when he had closed them.  Gasping for breath, he tried to turn his head and found he couldn't.  The metal spike pinned his head in place.  Figures danced in front of his eyes, like afterimages in strong light – figures of circuits, machines, engineering.  He didn't feel any different, but he looked up at the pipes that ran across the ceiling and knew that they carried power from the generator to the crew's quarters, providing heat and light, the essentials of survival.  He didn't think he knew how that had happened, then realized he did.  He understood exactly how the information had been downloaded into his brain.  He knew about the biochemical/synthetic processes used to fool his nervous system into believing things were happening.  It was all so clear, so obvious. 

He took a deep breath, and thought carefully of food.  Data tumbled over him, genetic structures, nutritional values, production methods of the goop he had eaten just before.  His stomach roiled.  Oh, that's disgusting, he thought.

He turned his head very slightly to look at Twitch, who raised an eyebrow.  "Cool with that, kid?"

He swallowed and nodded.  "Yeah.  I… yeah."

Twitch grinned.  "That's just basic knowledge and training.  There'll be test later, to make sure it all downloaded properly.  Ready for the next one?"

"There's more?"

He laughed.  "Yep.  You still gotta have history, combat, tactics, and some fast and dirty hacking."

"Hacking?"

Twitch nodded.  "You got pulled out purely on Shadow's say-so.  You got no skill we can use, no strings to pull.  We gotta do something with you, and that means training you up.  You'll be our backup pilot, operator, and we'll probably cram some medical training in there.  You're going to be our Joat."

"What's a Joat?" wondered Allan out loud.

"Jack of all trades," replied Twitch promptly enough.  "You'll be a fill-in.  You'll need to be at least competent with most of the major occupations on board, and some of the specialty ones."

Allan looked at him wide-eyed.  Twitch looked back, amused.  "What, you thought once you were out, it'd be all good, that you could just sit around feeling sorry for yourself?"  He shook his head.  "Sorry kid, but we don't have the time or the resources to babysit people who can't take care of themselves.  You either make it on your own merit, or you crash and burn."

Allan shut his eyes.  Crash and burn… that might be nice.  But then he thought, I can make a difference.  I won't let myself become dependant on everyone else.  I want to be useful. He opened his eyes and said in a shaking voice, "Hit me."

Twitch nodded approvingly and hit the button that would send the next lesson through his already splitting skull.