mcgrew's Journal: Mars, Ho! Chapter Twenty Nine

Movies
        Destiny and me woke up at the same time the next morning. We cuddled a while, made love again, then made coffee and took a shower together while the robots made us steak and cheese omelettes and toast and hash browns. Destiny put on the news. There was something about a problem in one of the company's boat factories; some machinery malfunctioned and killed a guy. I sure took notice of that! They didn't really have much information about it, though. They said something about trying to build in safety laws into the programming, I think I heard about something like that before.
        Something occurred to me. "You can afford pork but it makes you feel guilty? I didn't know astronomy teachers made that much money."
        "We don't," she said. "I should have told you, I don't just work for the charity, it's my charity. I started it."
        "What?"
        "Sorry, I never give my money any thought. My dad's Dewey Green."
        I almost fell out of my chair. "Your... dad..." I was almost speechless. "Uh, your dad's my CEO? No shit?"
        "Does it matter?"
        "I don't know," I said. I was dumbfounded. "I can't support a CEO's daughter on boat captain's pay!"
        "You don't have to, silly, I pay my own way. Didn't you say you were going to retire and live on Mars with me? Didn't you say you wanted to tend bar?"
        "Well, yeah, but bartenders don't make much money either."
        "No, but bar owners do. At least successful ones, you'll have to take some business classes."
        "I was going to go to college anyway, can't have a high school grad married to a PhD. What's your dad going to think?"
        "It doesn't matter, he has no say. I'm not dependent on him and I won't be dependent on anyone. I got my endowment when I was twenty one and invested it. I have more money that he does, even."
        "Holy shit," I said.
        "Computer," she said, "what time is it?"
        "The present time is seven fifty eight."
        "Oh shit," I said, running to the pilot room.
        Except for a slight course correction everything was fine, and that only took a minute. The computers do the work, I just make sure they all agree with each other.
        The commons only had the fat blonde in it. These girls almost never ate breakfast, except for the blonde. She was always in there eating, it seemed. Inspection was easy.
        Cargo was easy, too. Every single one was asleep, which was a relief. Tammy was keeping the animals under control and even keeping them human, apparently.
        It was the passenger section that was a pain - R1 caught fire. Why in the hell are robots programmed to clean unoccupied quarters? Rooms that are never occupied shouldn't even have any air in them. Air is a fire hazard!
        Anyway, there was nothing I had to do except log it. Another maid would come by to clean the mess after another robot dragged it off and repaired it. I thought of something, then thought better of it. I almost told the computer not to use parts cannibalized from other broken machines, but at this rate we would run out of maids. And probably other robots as well.
        The sick bay was empty but I had to inspect it anyway, mostly to make sure its drugs were all secure, especially with all these drug addicts on board, but since there was nobody there it didn't take any time at all. Now it was time for my daily exercise routine, my five flights of stairs down to the engines and generators, and my long walk from one generator to the other, stopping at all those huge ion rocket motors.
        All the engines and the lone working generator checked out and there weren't even any robots working on any of them, so I was done early for a change. I was glad of it, as busy as I'd been lately I could use some time off. I trudged up the five damned flights of stairs and walked back to my quarters.
        Destiny was reading as I walked in. "Johnie! You're home early!"
        "Easy day for once. Computer, what time is it?"
        The computer said "The present time is eleven thirteen."
        "Want to eat lunch early and watch something?" Destiny asked.
        "Sure," I said, and grinned. "Ham sandwiches?"
        She laughed. "Yeah, with pork bacon and a side of caviar and a hundred year old bottle of French wine to go with it! How about a cheeseburger and shike?"
        "How about a pizza and beer," I suggested.
        "Sounds good to me. Computer, a medium supreme pizza and two beers. We can eat it while we're watching. What do you feel like?"
        I didn't care. "I don't know, pick something."
        She put Spaghetti on. Huh? It's an old science fiction comedy from the first part of the twenty second century. Destiny said it was one of the last two dimensional movies, holograms were getting cheap enough to start being popular.
        We had spaghetti and meatballs and garlic bread for dinner and put on a modern holo, a really bad holographic recreation of one of the old westerns. It sucked, she shut it off after fifteen minutes and said "We should watch a spaghetti western."
        "Huh?" I said. "What's a 'spaghetti western'?"
        She said that a "spaghetti western" was a movie about the ancient American west that was filmed in Italy. No, I don't know why where a movie was made would matter, either.
        Instead of a spaghetti western she put on an old two dimensional shades of gray horror comedy. Huh? No, I never heard of a horror comedy either, but it was hilarious. Destiny said the movie studio had balked at its not having colors, but they were making fun of the horror movies from fifty years earlier when none of them had colors.
        When it was over we shut it off, put on some music, cuddled a while, and went to bed.
        Huh? None of your damned business!