Welcome to the Journal of Now and Forever. This Journal is a collection of my Star Control and Star Control 2 fiction. Note: Some of this material is, by necessity, extrapolation from the slim information provided by canon sources.

New fiction is posted first at My Livejournal before it appears here. This story is in response to 15 Minute Ficlets' Challenge #99.

So, guess who rang me up for the first time in what feels like forever but can only really be a month? Dina. Said she needed someone to do research into some seriously hush-hush stuff. I did the "hoosh-hoosh" joke but she didn't get it, or didn't hear me.

Of course, I think I know why she picked me. It's because of my series. Yes, yes, I know, back on Earth everyone was "above labels" and it was near-criminal to say someone was a specific personality because they were a specific ethnic or class type. Except when it came to us Androsynth. Because, let's face it, no matter how much we don't like to admit it, we do all have similar flaws within a series. The KORBs are all bad-tempered and so on. And my series, the CRC-16s, we were known as "obsessive paranoids" back on Earth. More "obsessive" than paranoid, I think – if we were truly paranoid, we couldn't function in society, could we?

At any rate, my guess is that because of the "obsessive paranoid" label, Dina thought I might be best to ferret out what she's looking for. In sum, she wants to find out exactly what Tomo (cf. "deceased advisor") had to do with biowarfare and microbe-based weaponry. I wasn't aware he really had anything to do with either subject, but you never know, do you? So I accepted, of course, because this could be something big. If I get what she's looking for, it's one more edge I have to stay in her good graces for when the Reproductive Research team gets back together.

Speaking of which, it sounds like the invasion is temporarily-to-permanently postponed, with no reason from the Hierarchy as to "why". As more time goes on, the more likely it isn't going to happen tomorrow, if I make myself clear. Maybe the Ur-Quan are busy enslaving someone else this year, I don't know.

Oh, one last thing, then I'll settle into Dina's work. (I cannot express the rather strange feeling of joy I get to have this new job, incidentally.) Oren had an amazing bit of luck. He was going through the livestock and seedstock files from Exodus (he's got some more free time now too) and guess what he found? I hardly dare to print it here, but I know it'll be safely passcoded: jellybeans! They're hardly gourmet, they're old and sugar-bloomed and sort of sticking together, but there's almost two kilos of mixed-flavor jellybeans. Someone must have stashed them in there and forgotten them. Yes, they're still edible, Oren tried one and didn't get sick. We don't know whether to hoard them or eat them at once or try to use them as favors. So far we're keeping them secret.

Should get to work now. More later as I find anything out.

~Personal journal of CRC-16 "Grif" Reproductive Researcher

Comments? Email me: laridian at aol dot com