Employment AMA; text: Graced

[miss_brilliant]

EMPLOYMENT AMA
Preferred Alias: Amanda Perry

Worst Job(s) Held: Every bit of consulting work I did before I was discovered by the military for businesses and projects I had absolutely no interest in. They all sort of blurred together.
Best Job(s) Held: Consulting software engineer for a project designing a new generation of FTL drives.
Fantasy Job(s): I guess probably still an astronaut.

Current Job(s): Nothing here yet, the last job I had was a consultant and show designer at a planetarium.

Ask Me Anything!

Comments

cw homophobic language

[pillz]

1. sounds hot or at least ont totally gay or just gay enough. lets do it

2. does it make u cry when u think abot it

[miss_brilliant]

All right, no one can say you weren't well warned when you get sucked into listening to me rant for hours about how no how single production of Chess has managed to not horribly mangle Florence's narrative. Or recognize that Freddie is gay. Or at least loves chess, not women.

Sometimes. Not as much as it used to. Partially because I realized it's never been my finger on the trigger and I can't control how my tools are used. I'm not happy about it, but if I hadn't learned to try to accept the things I can't control a long time ago I wouldn't have done anything with my life.

[pillz]

1. i'll drink. well owrk it out. it kind of cute when u all passionate & old woman yellin at cloud

2. but when ur stuff gets used 2 do good, do u feel good? do u feel more good / get off more when ur shit works out and helps people than u feel bad when ur shit hurts people? is that fair ;(

do u care if it fair

[miss_brilliant]

Now see, if you'd just left it at that ranting old timer comment you might have gotten off easy. But 'cute' is begging me to find out if I still know all the words of the Quartet.

...

I'd like to say a job well done is its own reward, but that's a lie. Of course I was ecsatic when I kept Nick's ship flying, and that high was more intense than the knowing in abstract that some of what I've helped design has indirectly contributed to death. And no, that's not fair. But if any universe were fair, drunk men wouldn't be able to get behind the wheel to hit vehicles carrying nine year olds who aren't wearing seatbelts.

[she knows, logically, he didn't intend to hit that very specific nerve. But there's a point when even she can't be wholly logical]

If I'd just had a mundane IT job, I might not have contributed to anyone's death, but I also wouldn't have saved the lives of eighty people or seen things that made me believe it was possible that anyone could just give me my legs back in an instant. And if I wallowed in every horrible thing that's touched me, I wouldn't have even gone to college. That's not saying it's easy to do, or that I always pull it off. But the responsibilty for what my work has been used for rests far more heavily on people far further up the chain of command, and I can't take the blame for their decisions anymore than my parents should have taken the blame for the man in that other car.

I guess saying I care but I can't afford to care too much is something of a cop out, but it's also true.

[pillz]

hey man. i don't care all the fucking time. u in good company, nobody going to judge u 4 shuttin out the hypothetical dead wit your lil gorey nerd hands over ur lil gorey nerd ears

[he might not have intended to hit a very specific nerve, but there's no way he hadn't been poking around in shitty childish search of shitty childish conflict.]

i like ur longform fjstifications
sounds better than mine and i done some shit.
but u know
when u already got 2 many words backin up ur shady fucking decisions, its rpety hard to get a real redemption arc out of your 2nd (3rd, 4th watever) lease on life
dont u want 2 fly ur heroic fuckin cape

[miss_brilliant]

I didn't think you were really that concerned about my moral fiber. But when I realized just how different my dreams of working with the space program were from my reality, I did have to realign my thinking in ways I'm not sure I've always liked. And it's possible I've had far too much time alone to consider that.

Heroic cape? [yes, that's what gives her pause. This is probably a sign she's been hanging around him a little too long]

Well, yes. I guess the kick I got out the first phone call when they asked me to come help with the drives is proof of that. I'd been very much on the sidelines up to that point, and going back to that was harder than I thought it would be, especially after I had my hands on the ship's defenses. It wasn't easy going back to the daily grind like nothing had changed.

[pillz]

[and maybe kavinsky's been hanging around amanda too long, because— because, there's a part of him that wants to comment idiotically that he'd thought she was a gimp, so what the fuck is hands on about? but he doesn't say anything. joseph kavinsky, demonstrating basic human decency. you're welcome, world!

(not really.)

(he can get over the bar if you set it so low he can basically roll over it.)]

well speakin of going to some weird shit
wat is ur new dream baby girl
we got a lot of weird machines & worlds 2 save here. i dunno if any of them r > drives
but shit
ur nerd rage gotta be good 4 somethin

[miss_brilliant]

[if she were bothering, she would have clarified that yes they hadn't been hers...but they also had been. She'd let herself forget that she was controlling another woman's body so completely that she'd actually been shocked when Nick had forced her to look in a mirror after she kissed him. But that's another moral quandry she hasn't been letting herself think about. She kept telling herself waivers had been signed so that made her drunk impulse all right. And maybe it did. She knew the woman she'd been living through had a wedding ring, at any rate, so she probably wasn't the only one who had tired to get a few moments of happiness from a pretty grim situation.

Because that made it better, that they'd probably both used each other's mouths for more than the functions of staying alive. Amanda knew it didn't, but it was a good rationalization]

Yeah. Of course, even if circumstances were different I'd be interested in exploring the possibilites of the technology here. I don't think it's matter of it being greater than what I've done before, although the scale of what we're apparently trying to do certainly is.

Of course I want to throw myself into that, in whatever capacity I can. But I'm used to jumping into already established teams, not spearheading anything myself outside of tinkering with private projects. I really don't have any idea where to start.

cw sexual vulgarity

[pillz]

same here
only spearheding i do is puttin my dick in somebody
guess that a good excuse 2 sit @ home wit some tequila & fuck around wit chess while bein tragically hung up on some guy
which should b our fuckin national sport, u ask me
or
option 2
we could go out 4 a drive
u want ur car back? u think taht would b a good distraction

[miss_brilliant]

[if she could accurately depict facepalming in text, she would]

I really wish I could say you're exaggerating, but depressingly I think you're the one person who has the best idea of how pathetically hung up I really am.

You know, that's actually a legitimately good idea.

[pillz]

dont sound so fuckin surprised, woman
what givez

[miss_brilliant]

I think it's more that I'm still surprised that sounds more appealing to me than programming at the moment. It really wasn't a hobby I expected to take up, much less like so much.

[pillz]

basic logic baby girl
when u stuk it feels good 2 go fast
lol
guess even when u aint, fasters good
fast is power
& nobody likes powerless

[it's the basis for all phallic overcompensation ever, really.]

[miss_brilliant]

True enough. That's probably at least half of my attraction to space travel, anyway

Part of me sort of hates to admit that the car is actually far hotter than most of the aircraft I worked with.

[if she'd actually used 'sexier' in conversation with him she probably would have had to hide under her bed for at least three days]

[pillz]

thats the fuckn spirit


hey hey
hey baby do u want me 2 dream u a airplane ;(

[miss_brilliant]

Well. Supposing we could find someone to teach me to do something with it instead of just letting it sit there looking pretty, sure.

[really, now that she thinks about it, once the shock of getting the car wore off she might have proposed it back in Eudio. Maybe]

[pillz]

fuck yes baby
tahts the spirita
well break chamapigne over her face