Career Counseling

Living on a space ship was like living in a small town. Everybody knew everyone else’s business. With only 2,758 people on board, you met very few strangers. Lia was pretty sure she knew everybody… or at least knew of everybody.
She’d been writing weekly crew profiles to send home for five years now. Today she figured she could kill two birds with one stone. Larry, the school’s guidance counselor and school therapist, was one of the people taking a vacation day.
Lia, sitting at his desk, noticed that he’d placed his least favorite students on the agenda for today. She sighed. People were always giving her their least favorite jobs. Sometimes people saved them up for months before taking a vacation day.
Ofelia had complained to her mom, but her response was, “You made your career choice,” which Lia would argue wasn’t true.
Lia hadn’t made a career choice. That had been the problem. She remembered that day well. It had bee right before The Decompression. Larry’s office looked much the same as it had ten years ago, when Lia had sat in the chair on the other side. He had a grainy satellite photo poster of Eden Twelve, their destination, tacked to his back wall. It was supposed to inspire them. Instead it just served as a permanent reminder to most kids that they’d been hijacked by their parents off to some strange planet that was completely out of touch with new trends on Earth.
Lia had sat in the chair while Larry sat behind his desk, Eden Twelve looming behind his head like a huge blue and white halo. Larry had asked the eternal question.
“So, Ofelia, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
The fourteen year old Lia stared back at him blankly.
“It says here that you’re good at English.”
Unfortunately there weren’t many careers available on a space ship, and very few of them involved being good at English.
“So you’re sure you don’t want to be a main frame specialist?” She shook her head.
“How about a xeno botanist or a xeno zoologist? They’ll be plenty of new species on the planet. You could name them after yourself, and your mom, and your aunt.” Still, Lia shook her head no.
“Okay, so you should go into officer training and take after you mom and be a captain.”
“I don’t want to be a captain,” Lia said firmly.
“Your aunt was a famous pilot…”
“I don’t like flying. I get sick in the simulators.”
“Look kid, I’ve already got all the communications officers, English teachers, artists, poets and writers this ship can hold. You’re just out of luck. Here’s the list.”
Larry punched the beam button on his PDA angrily. “Take it to your mother and ask her which one you’ll take.” He dismissed her from his office and sent her on her way.
As she walked down the corridor to her cabin, Lia stared at the list. Most of the open job options had the word “technician” in them. Not a single one reached out and grabbed her. It was rather unfair that on board ship they were supposed to make their career choices at 15 and specialize early. If she’d stayed on Earth, she could have gone to a regular university and had almost another 5 years to decide what she wanted to do with her life.
Yeah, she liked English, but she also liked talking to people, and problem solving, but she didn’t want to be an officer. She’d seen her mother’s life too full of people needing her attention to make that appealing at all. Lia didn’t want to be in charge of anything. She knew she probably didn’t have much of a choice.
Kathryn Clovelly, problem solver that she was, came up with a different solution. Rather than specialize, like every other student on board, Lia would intern for a month in all the different departments. That way, there would be someone who could fill in a job temporarily, and orient a replacement with the most important facts. She could become the first one woman galactic temp agency.
Grasping at any option that didn’t leave her tied to a computer monitor all her life, Lia agreed and began her study of The Hope and its crew, learning a little bit about everything. It wasn’t until much later, when Lia realized that her journals were chronicling life aboard ship in a way that no one else had thought of. She’d made a new name for her position when requisitioned office space for herself. She was The Hope’s New Historian.
So there she was, filling in for Larry, carrying the same list, plus or minus a few careers options, almost ready to break the bad news to Larissa Washington. She too, might have her dreams altered, space allowing.

The door chirped and Larissa came in and plopped dramatically in the chair without an invitation. She sighed a huge sigh, letting her shoulders droop until she was almost sitting bent over. It was a shame that the acting troupe was already full.
“Do you know what my mother said to me today?” Her head popped up, brimming with puppy dog eyes.
“She said I couldn’t leave the house without putting on a bra. Not only did she say this, but she also said it loudly in front of my dad and my little brother.”
“That may be embarrassing, but not exactly criminal. Maybe she thought you’d be more comfortable with a little support.”
“Does it look like I need support?” Larissa sat up and thrust out her flat chest. Lia had to admit she was flat as a board.
“And anyways, my dad isn’t any better. He yelled at me the other day because I was on the communicator after hours. What does he expect, anyway, if he doesn’t let me out of the cabin to talk to my friends, of course I’m going to call them.”
“I think this conversation today is supposed to be discussing your career choices.”
“I don’t care what career you give me, as long as I can move out of that place tomorrow.”
“You know that you can’t apply for single housing until you’re eighteen.”
“Or you’re pregnant,” Larissa stated.
“What?” Lia looked at the girl sitting in front of her. “I don’t think that’s a successful alternative.”
“Oh really? Doc Martin told me just last week that I should think about multiplying.”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean…”
“He said we were under quota.”
How dare that man make suggestions to fifteen year old girls that they should start having sex just because the colony was short of its population goal! Doctor Martin Edwards was slightly off balance. In another era, he would have been an evangelical preacher, so now he preached the gospel of multiplication to young girls who needed to grow up themselves before having a baby.
“I’ve got a father all picked out. Meldric Champlin. He’s cute, but stupid enough not to ask questions and be a pain in the butt when the baby comes. It’ll be easy to convince him he doesn’t have to move in with me, and then I’ll have the place all to myself.”
“And the baby.”
“Yeah, him too.”
“Please tell me you haven’t actually done anything with Meldric yet.”
“Nope. Maybe second base.”
“Maybe?”
“What are you? The date police?”
“If I can find a way to get you out of your parents’ house, will you postpone Meldric for a year or two?”
“Sure, it’s not like I’m in love with him or anything.”
“So let’s talk careers. Which one do you want?”
“Well, which one do you have?”
Lia stumbled for a moment. New Historian wasn’t on any of the official lists. No one had exactly recognized what she did as something useful.
“I don’t exactly have… I’m not on any of the apprenticeship lists.”
“So?”
“So how about xeno biology?”
“I suck at science. I want to do what you do.”
“And what exactly do you think I do?”
“You do everything. You’re like the tooth fairy, hopping in and out of people’s lives, doing all the bad stuff, but keeping a smile on your face. I’m good at smiling.” To prove her point, she sat up straight, crossed her legs and plastered a look of complete bliss and happiness on her face. As she bounced back and forth, her tiny braids jiggled like little dancing snakes.
“And that will solve both our problems.”
“Our?” Lia wasn’t following her. She was beginning to feel that Larissa had been leading this conversation from the start.
“Yeah. You’re over 21, and still living with your mother. So I become your apprentice, and you file for a two room cabin as far away from my parents as possible. There’s plenty of apprentices that live with the Romanovs.
Juliet and Viola had jobs that required them to stay close to their work, and they often placed their apprentices within a close range to keep an eye on their respective plants and animals.
“Look, I’ve already found the perfect spot. All you have to do is authorize it,” Larissa pulled out her PDA and slid it across the desk. She had already filled out all the forms. It awaited only a signature.
“Did you tell Larry any of this?”
“Good God, no. That old fart? He’d probably try to make me a computer mainframe technician. Can you imagine a more boring job. Just go ahead and sign in. I’ll show up at your place bright and early to help you start to move.”
“Don’t your parents have to sign something?”
“Yeah, they’re going to sign a form that says I’ve been granted a special dispensation to apprentice under the only daughter of Captain Clovelly who requires me to move out in order to begin my intensive training.”
“Clever.” The girl was more nervous than she let on, but she seemed to have reinforced concrete instead of guts. Lia now wondered if Larissa had convinced Larry to take the day off, and put her on Ofelia’s schedule without him having a clue about what was going on. She might have been working on this plan for weeks.
“If you don’t want to sign it, that’s okay… but make up your mind, because I have a date with Meldric tonight.”
That was near blackmail, but it tipped the scales. Lia grabbed her stylus and signed the form and sent it on its way to the central computer.
Larissa squealed and nearly jumped across the desk to hug Lia.
“You won’t regret, I promise. Promise, promise, promise, promise! Just wait until I tell Stephanie!”
Larissa bolted out the door before Lia could have second thoughts. Five minutes later, she had about twenty of them.