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 #39.

XR4-IT waited in line with the rest for instructions. The big colony ships – well, the stolen orbital stations from Earth – were being dismantled by those who'd had experience with heavy machinery, but it was up to the relatively unskilled like himself to see about putting the parts back together in new, useful, surface-of-the-planet configurations.

Of course, unskilled was a relative term. He'd had a long, moderately content career in genetically modifying just about anything mammalian before the Exodus, and that was where his experience lay. But actually building things out of metal or wood or plastic – that was a different thing entirely.

He scratched his scalp. Jeez, he needed a shower. His hair had reached the point of sticking up and out at all angles, all unattractive ones at that, just from lying down. Or a small breeze. Or thinking hard. It was the grease and the weird cowlick he had, the one that made him somewhat more unique among his clone series because it appeared he was the only one who'd gotten it. Which was nice except when it made the left rear of his head look like a rooster's tail.

The line moved forward. There wasn't too much small talk of the Earthling variety, just the usual stuff about when personal quarters would be built and maybe getting some farms started so they'd have something besides freeze-dried rations to eat.

XR4-IT didn't mind the rations. The berries were actually pretty good to eat when freeze-dried. He'd eat those things like candy if he could.

He scratched his scalp again. Maybe on his free time he'd see if there was a hidden place to get a bath in the nearby waterway. It'd have to be hidden because he wasn't sure if they were allowed to use it for bathing yet. But – ech – the base of his scalp was starting to scab over in that funny way it had when he hadn't washed his hair in a while. It'd be fine and then wham, one day, scabs, even though he had no injuries ever back there. If it were just a lump of dead skin he'd assume it was psoriasis. Maybe it still was. Who knew? Well, maybe one of the medicos did, but it didn't seem important enough to go to one of them for, not when just getting some soap and water on his head cleared it up...

At last he was at the front of the line. He dutifully gave his series number and relevant skills, and was rewarded with the directions on how to get to the foreman in charge of the solar panel installation. Figured.

"Oh, one more thing," the Androsynth behind the trestle table said. The wind ruffled the pages of the notebooks here; it was an open-air line, since there was no effective shelter outside the starships at present. "D'you want to come up with a new name?"

XR4-IT blinked. "I can do that?"

"Yeah, it's a new directive come down: if you want, you can rename yourself. We don't have to stick with what we were assigned upon Creation," the other Androsynth said. "But there's some rules here – "

"Dean," XR4-IT said, without even thinking.

"Uh, Dean? Are you sure?" The one behind the table looked at the paper he'd been about to hand over. "I think it fits all the rules... I guess it's okay. And it doesn't look like anyone's taken it yet... Sign here." As "Dean" did so, the other Androsynth asked: "Any story behind that name?"

"No," Dean lied, with a friendly smile.

Comments? Email me: laridian at aol dot com