The manifest technician monitoring personnel entry and exit from the ship wasn’t actually a manifest technician at all. It was a droid, plugged into the central computer system via a cable that extended from its torso to the wall, and it held up a shiny steel-alloy arm to indicate that Rogers was to wait.

“CALL FUNCTION [PERFUNCTORY GREETING]. TARGET [HUMAN, UNKNOWN NAME, UNKNOWN RANK]. PROMPT: NAME. PROMPT: DESTINATION. PROMPT: PURPOSE OF VISIT.”

The rough, broken speech of the droid was like biting into a cookie full of nails. Rogers wondered how, in a few thousand years of speech recognition and replication technology, they hadn’t been able to make the droids sound like anything other than brain-damaged gorillas. Even the personal computer terminals sounded better than shinies.

“R. Wilson Rogers,” he replied, not feeling comfortable at all that he was having a conversation with a robot. “Reinstatement and reassignment.”

A moment passed, the droid’s glowing blue eyes staring at Rogers.

“REJECT FUNCTION [MESSILY DESTROY INTRUDER]. CALL FUNCTION [A-156 AUTHORIZED ENTRY AND COURTEOUS ADMISSION]. OUTPUT STRING: APPROVED. ENJOY YOUR STAY. PLEASE REPORT TO SUPPLY FOR UNIFORM ISSUE.”

Rogers rolled his eyes and walked away, wondering why they would trust something so important as personnel manifesting to a machine with no human oversight. It made him uncomfortable.

That unsavory encounter behind him, all of a sudden Rogers was back aboard the bustling hive of activity that was the MPS Flagship. It smelled like carbon, processed air, and home. The first two were expected; the latter was a bit of a surprise to Rogers. Maybe he had missed being in the military just a little bit. He wondered when the beer light would go on, signaling the noontime cessation of all work-like activities and the commencement of binge drinking and carousing. The peacetime military was hard to beat for work-life balance.

Someone jostled Rogers as they rushed by him, nearly knocking him back out into the docking bay.

“Hey!” Rogers said indignantly. A female spacer, whose rank he couldn’t see, kept walking down the corridor without looking back. Rogers shook his head. Some troops had no manners.

The jolt brought him out of his semi-nostalgic reverie, anyway. Rogers gave another head shake and let his legs take him the direction he needed to go. It had only been a little over a year since he’d left the military, so there was still a bit of muscle memory left. He had spent so much time in the supply depot that he was pretty sure he could have, for example, stumbled there in a state of blacked-out drunkenness with no problem. Just as an example.

The supply depot and most of the docking bays were located on the same level of the Flagship, so there was no need for Rogers to take the larger up-line intra-ship transportation cars that went between decks. There was a smaller system of zipcars, the in-line, that moved along through the center of each level, and Rogers set his course for the nearest terminal. The depot wasn’t that far of a walk, but Rogers preferred simplicity over . . . well, most physical exertion. As he approached the terminal, however, he was met by a stern-faced young woman who he didn’t recognize, dressed in a typical dress uniform and wearing an old-style train conductor’s hat. There seemed to be an awful lot of new folks around for only being gone for a little over a standard year.