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

daemon: anned

[lacquers]

And where in the universe would you most like to go, if you were an astronaut? What would you most like to see? I'd happily accept a list, no need to limit it to one thing.

[miss_brilliant]

Oh god. Well, it's probably a little cliche, and kind of quaint in my line of work, but I do still fantasize about being part of the first manned expedition to Mars. Partially because it's something civilians actually know about, but mostly because it would just be incredible.

[lacquers]

I wouldn't call it cliche or quaint! Being one of the first humans to visit a new planet? That seems admirable, not to mention exciting. Is it something that's on the horizon where you're from?

[miss_brilliant]

Well, I guess my perspectives a bit skewed since we've actually been much farther out where I'm from, it's just not public knowledge yet. The joys of being involved in secret military work. And I'm not sure if I put quotations around joys or not, honestly.

It's still being worked on though, yes. We have military bases on other planets, but no real settlements as of yet, for a variety of reasons.

[lacquers]

Oh, I see! Well now, that's fascinating, isn't it? I'm from a version of Earth where we've not achieved quite that much. The history you're alluding to sounds pretty interesting. I wonder how different our homes are.

text; un: moonshined (lmk if anything of this is too presumptuous)

[pillz]

1. if u r going 2 blast mjusic around the house can u play somethin wit more fuckin and gun sounds. or dubstep
2. do u ever think ur consulting work & shit ever ended up w someone gettin killed

xoxo orommate

[miss_brilliant]

1. Dubstep is doable. If you want guns and sex, though, you might have to settle for the scores from a few select musicals. Well, and a few alternative female singers from '90s.

2. I'm quite sure it did, indirectly at least, considering what I was helping with. Now, we could go around in circles as to if those deaths were serving the greater good or not, and my feelings on that could change on any given day.

daemon: sophiad

[helical]

What kind of work did you do for the military?

[miss_brilliant]

Primarily, I was helping to program a new generation of FTL drive--hyperdrive. And when a colleageue's ship had one on the fritz, I helped repair it so their crew wouldn't be left adrift.

It's actually pretty...not boring, but not really glamarous in the day to day work. Mostly a lot of very long, sometimes heated discussions over email with other programmers for months on end.

[miss_brilliant]

It is. Even several years on, I still have to remind myself I didn't dream it all up sometimes. I'm fairly certain from talking to others that my version of Earth is rather unique, which is...I'm not really sure how to feel about it, really.

The short story is we discovered technology another race left behind that lets us open temporary wormholes between certain places. I'd like to say we have using them down to a perfect science, but that would be a lie. Which is one of the many reasons it's secret. Which is cool, when you're in on it, until you can't tell your family about it so you're just another boring computer geek to most people.

[lacquers]

I see! A kind of scientific superhero. Or, pardon me, super-heroine? As far as the world's concerned, you do work that's mundane, but they don't know you have a secret identity?

Or something like that. It makes for intriguing reading.

So, you're keeping it a secret until you can use it accurately and consistently to do what, exactly? You mentioned bases. [ This is both an interesting and worrisome prospect. ]

[helical]

[ well, that's not exactly what he was looking for, but he's still curious, and is a pretty firm believer that everyone's skills can be useful around here. ]

Is the technology your worked with anything like the technology here?

daemon: emeraldd

[astralera]

Hello, Mistress Perry.

What is an astronaut?

[miss_brilliant]

It you're going to use a title or honorific, it's Dr, actually.

Someone who works in outer space--ah, out among the...stars in some fashion. I've helped work on the equipment those people use, but it's still not what I really do.

[miss_brilliant]

Some of it is. Most of the computers are similar enough, and the terminal in the temple is a bit like some things we've found. The daemons aren't, at least not in being...physically here.

[astralera]

My apologies, Dr. I am unfamiliar with this title. It is shorthand for something?

There are people who travel to the stars where you hail from?

[miss_brilliant]

It's fine. Mistress just has some very different connotations where I'm from. It's short for Doctor. It...means you have advanced education and training in or more fields. For me it's computer engineering.

Yes, there are. There have been for...well, at least from my race, for about four decades.

[astralera]

Thank you for the explanation, Doctor Perry. I'm sorry for the misunderstanding, and did not mean any disrespect.

The only doctors I have heard of in my world are the plague doctors of old - healers. How do those doctors of academic specialties avoid being confused with those of healing arts?

That is amazing. The advanced societies long past had focused on travel to other realms. I believe the closest to outer space travel my world achieved was when ancient Allag bound a terrible creatures and sent it to circle the planet as a moon for eras. In current times we merely study the stars from the ground.

[miss_brilliant]

It's perfectly fine. I've worked a bit with people from other worlds before, so I sort of figured it was something like that.

Well, usually if you're actually working in your field it's more or less understood. But if for example you're writing a letter or something, someone with my non-medical training would sign with PhD after their name, instead of putting Dr. before. I'm not sure who exactly worked out that designation in the first place.

That's sort of funny, a similar thing happened on my world. Another race that sort of helped us along centuries ago travel led all through the galaxy, but buried the technology they used for it and it took us quite awhile to uncover and learn how to use it, so we only just got off planet ourselves a little while ago comparatively.

[miss_brilliant]

you know, I never thought to describe it that way, but I guess that's pretty close, yeah. My family knows I work for the military, and my former aide knew a lot more about my work for obvious reasons, but they don't know I work with alien technology. Thinking of it as being a sort of superhero does make it sound a lot cooler.

Well, that's part of why it's under wraps anyway. Part of it is also the fact we've come across several races that aren't exactly fond of humanity. Some have good reasons, some...not so much. So I suppose we're trying to keep the masses from panicking about alien invasions or something.

As far as the big plan...really, I'm not high enough up the chain of command to really know the big end goal. I know the plans for some of them, like one of the bases was established off planet because it was the best place to try to unlock the function of a piece of technology due to the planet's unique core. It turned out to be a bit of a disaster, but we did learn from it.

[astralera]

That is fascinating.

Are these astronauts the only ones permitted to travel in space?

[lacquers]

In that case, I have another question! If you had a super-heroine name/identity, what would it be?

It's noble to want to protect people from panicking about information that they might not be able to act on, though it's my not-limited experience that the truth usually finds a way to be told. Then again, my entire race is a secret from humans in the version of Earth I'm from, so that little nugget of wisdom seems a little foolish, doesn't it? If not foolish, maybe counter-intuitive at the least.

Do you personally think people could handle knowing? What about these races that don't like humanity as much? Do you think there's a real danger of invasion or some kind of retribution? [ He is full of questions when invited to start asking them... ] I imagine there could be repercussions if the government were to take something from these planets for their own use.

[miss_brilliant]

There are some people without traditional astronaut training who do get to go to space where I'm from in a very unique program, although they do get a crash course in a lot of things when they join up. I would have probably gone up there, actually, if I'd been physically able to.

But outside of the program I worked for, yes. Although there is talk of letting very rich untrained civilians go up on visits. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that yet.

[helical]

Yeah, the systems aren't entirely unfamiliar to me, but the daemons are new.

Does this mean you could program or fix some of these systems if need be?

[astralera]

Are you not physically able to? If it is too personal of a question please do not feel obligated to answer.

Those of high status and wealth do often get away with ignoring protocol. I suppose it must be the same in most worlds.