Tom ran down the corridor to see if he could still catch up with Josh and apologize or thank him or something.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

There were just too many ways he could have gone. Tom walked back to his quarters and thought about his next action. "I'll just go to the mess hall and wait until Josh shows up." He picked up his electrical engineering book so he had something to do.

At the mess hall, Tom slowly, slowly, ate his food while reading his book. Josh still hadn't showed up. "There are other places Josh could eat. Or the tour was his last task for the day." Tom finished his food and had a new idea "I'll go to the workshop to practice what I'm learning, or maybe even work on a project."

Tom nervously walked the corridors of the ship, his heart pounding with a mixture of excitement and nervousness. "I am going to to step into the workshop. This is different from any task I've done. The ranking officer hasn't been told about me and doesn't have to accept my request. I've got to use my wits and charm to get what I want." Clutching the electrical engineering textbook, he thought, "This is it, the first real step in working toward my own plans."

He paused at the door of the workshop, taking a deep breath before stepping inside. The room was fairly quiet, and his eyes quickly settled on a man in his mid-thirties with the rank of Chief Petty Officer on his uniform. "That must be him, the guy in charge," Tom thought, feeling a knot of apprehension in his stomach.

Gathering his courage, he approached the Chief, his grip tightening around the textbook. "Excuse me, sir," he said, trying to sound more confident than he felt. "I'm Tom, a contractor. I have a interest in learning about electrical engineering, and I was hoping to use the workshop to practice what I'm learning."

"Hello Tom, I'm Chief Henderson," and the Chief was silent for long seconds while he looked at Tom with a scrutinizing gaze. Tom couldn't help but wonder what the Chief was thinking. "Is he going to say no? Did I come on too strong?" his mind raced with doubts.

"I think I like your attitude," Chief Henderson said, "Let's see if your actions back it up. See those six radios over there. I want you to clean the sand out of them."

"Well, if it's a test he's giving me," Tom thought. "I'll just have to prove I'm serious."

As he worked on the radios, meticulously cleaning each part, he thought, "I'll show him I can do this, that I'm not afraid of hard work."

--

"Sir, I'm done." Tom said with relief.

Chief Henderson inspected the radios. "Amazing. I think the switch on this one works better than before. You can keep using this workstation, and take things from the junk box, but you have to ask for anything else."

"Thank you. Thank you sir" Tom said.

Tom pulled some parts out of the junk box and started looking at his book again. He thought about what he was going to build:

"First option: a radio interception device to capture the admin command codes next time Dr Conrad connects to my cybernetics. I'll have to do some adjustments later, because I need to check some of the specifics against that technical manual, which hopefully makes it back to the hotel, otherwise it's useless. If that manual is too far out of date, it could also be useless."

"Second option: a jammer. If I can disrupt the signal between the cybernetics and their base, I can give myself some privacy. I do have privacy right now. I hope. When the new visor comes in, there's the possibility someone is watching 24/7. But if I do use the jammer, I don't know how long I would have until someone investigates physically. I also won't know if the upgrades will have some fallback to spy on me."

"Third option: a sensitive heartbeat detector, to check if Dr Conrad really is a ... nanite zombie. But if my dream were some kind of subliminal message he sent, he's already planning to tell me next time he sees me, right? Am I really considering building this based on something I heard in a dream?"

"I don't know. I think I only have time to build one of these devices. What should I make?"