Randoms by David Liss Page B

long as possible because I didn’t want to have to go back to my bunk and lie there with nothing to do except avoid the other humans—and now the angry weapons officer. The captain was obviously busy, but when she dropped me off at my door, she eyed me with concern, if I interpreted her hammerhead expression correctly.
    â€œIf you like, you can come back tomorrow when we pick up the Ganari. It won’t be exciting, but you will get to see bridge officers engage in their duties as we drop into, and then out of, relativistic space. Learning how starships work has its advantages, if you know what I mean.”
    I did not know what she meant, and she must have understood my blank expression.
    â€œTake a look at your experience points,” she said.
    I made an effort to see the readout in the bottom left of my HUD, and there it was. It now read 1014/1000. My tour had earned enough points for me to level up.
    I broke into a grin. “Nice. I’ll be there tomorrow.”
    She put one of her heavy hands on my shoulder and locked on to my face with her huge, wide-set eyes. “I know the randoms can be made to feel isolated,” she said. “Trust me when I tell you that you don’t have to be limited by the others in your delegation. You will find many opportunities to contribute.”
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    I found Dr. Roop in the observation lounge, a room toward the back of the ship that had a large wall, where, I supposed, a large window would appear when we returned to normal space. Dr. Roop had set aside his Earthly business suit and now wore a pants-and-shirt-and-jacket combination of strange angles and contours, but it was, in its own alien way, quite dapper. The suit was dark olive green and the shirt red. He had a handkerchief in the jacket pocket. Everywhere he went, Dr. Roop remained a natty dresser.
    He was typing away furiously on a blue keyboard projected by his data bracelet, and he showed every indication of being busy, but he looked up when I entered. “What can I do for you, Zeke?”
    â€œI leveled up,” I told him. “I need to know what I do now.”
    â€œCongratulations.” He cleared a space for me to sit by him. “If you concentrate your gaze at those numbers you’ll gain access to the leveling process. Pick the skill you want, and focus on it to select it. But before you do any of that, you’re going to want to use your bracelet to study the skill tree and decide how, precisely, you want to advance.”
    â€œWhere can I look at the skill tree?”
    â€œWhen you go to level up, it will pull up the skill tree automatically, but we can take a look right here.” He clicked a fewkeys on his keyboard and a 3-D projection of a flow chart began to hover between us.

    I stared at this in confusion. “I’m not sure what all this means.”
    â€œIt is rather straightforward,” he said. “If you choose strength, the nanites will make alternations to your overall musculature, and you will become stronger. If you choose to augment your hearing, you will hear more clearly and across a wider range. You can ask the system to overlay suggestionsfor specific career paths—for example, if you wanted to move toward a career in starship operations, you could see how best to level.”
    He typed a few keys, and various intellect, agility, health, and perception skills were now glowing yellow.
    â€œSo, I become, like, a cyborg? Part machine?” I was both terrified and excited by this prospect.
    â€œNot at all,” Dr. Roop explained. “The changes are biological. There remains no mechanical superstructure to prop up the new skills. The nanites simply alter your muscle fiber, optic nerves, synaptic firing rates, and so on in order to increase, if only marginally, your capacity in whichever skill you select. You must have some ability in the first place, of course. The members of your species