The Birth of a Pod Pilot Part 2:

He didn’t seem to pick up on her demeaning inflection. “Awesome. We’ll have to talk about it later. I have the whole series on reels. Even the unaired episode and the movie! Did you ever see the movie?”“Uh,” Cierra said, glancing over at Nora, “no. Never saw it.”“Oh, maybe you can come over and watch it some time. It was awesome!”Nora laughed and Cierra smirked as well. “Yeah, maybe,” she said. They had already arrived at the Easy Times, but the boy was about to drive past. “Stop here!” Cierra shouted.The car slammed to a halt and Nora and Cierra were already jumping out of the car. “But I have to find a place to park!” he said.“We’ll see you inside!” Nora shouted right as she slammed the door shut. The two of them ran up to the front of the line waiting to get in.“Hi Louis!” Cierra shouted to the bouncer, who smiled, nodded, and let her pass without a word.***That night, Cierra and Nora stumbled back to Cierra’s house at well past midnight. The two didn’t make any effort to stay quiet and bumped into things and were giggling hysterically as they clumsily lurched around.“Hey honey,” Cierra’s father said from the kitchen, where he sat with his eyes closed and head leaning back. “Did you have fun tonight?”“Yeah dad,” she said. “Hey, uh… Nora wansht to stay over t’night. Sthat ok?”“That’s fine.” He cracked an eye open and looked at Nora, who was swaying back and forth. “Is she alright?”“Yesh!” Cierra said. “She’s just… She’s a little sick. We’re goin’ ta bed.”“Goodnight honey. Your mother’s sleeping, so try not to make too much noise.”“Whatever! We’re goin’! Come on Nora!” She grabbed Nora’s arm and pulled her down the hallway toward her room.***The next day, Cierra and Nora woke up late and eventually went to school, two periods late. None of the teachers bothered to ask them where they’d been, why they were late, or why they looked so sick.Toward the end of the day, the boy who’d driven them to the club came up to them. “Hey, what happened to you two last night?”“What do you mean?” Nora asked.“After I parked, I came looking for you, but they made me wait in line for almost an hour before I got in!” he said. “And then when I got inside, I couldn’t find you at all!”“Oh, we went into the back,” Cierra said.“They wouldn’t let me in there to look for you.”“Yeah, my dad did some stuff for the owner,” Cierra said. “So we get to go into the back.”“Sorry,” Nora said, halfheartedly.The boy frowned and grumbled. “Well, maybe next time,” he said.“Uh huh,” Cierra answered, already forgetting about him.***Cierra managed to coast through high school, thanks in part to the apathy of the teachers and their unwillingness to challenge any students on any issue. She managed to accumulate a lot of friends who’d hold her hair back over a toilet, but not much else.She and Nora drifted slightly over the years. They were still friends, of sorts. But Nora’s parents pressed her to better herself. They punished her when she stepped out of line and, eventually, she stopped doing it. She still managed to have fun, sometimes even with Cierra, but it was much more restrained than before.She never thought about college during school, but having graduated, she now went about the task of getting into college. Luckily, her parents had plenty of money and the University of Caille had a low barrier of entry. Nora ended up going to the University as well, though her grades helped her get in at a lower rate.With the two faced with the prospect of living with new roommates, they gravitated back toward each other and got a dorm room together. In their first semester, Nora quickly came to regret this.Cierra took college as a further opportunity to party. She ditched most of her classes, spent most of her nights drinking, and on the nights she came home did so at late hours when Nora was trying to sleep.

The end of the semester didn’t come fast enough for Nora. She was eager to get away from Cierra. But on the next-to-last day before their break Cierra came back to the room uncharacteristically early with tears in her eyes.“I’m failing all my classes!” she said.Nora was flabbergasted. “You never went to class, never studdied, and never did any work. What did you expect?”“It wasn’t like this in high school!” Cierra wailed.“This isn’t high school,” Nora said with a sigh. “This isn’t the best university, but you do have to do some work to get by.”“My academic advisor told me if I didn’t pass all my classes next semester, I’m going to get kicked out.” she said. “Nora, I need help.”Nora sighed. “Alright, Cierra. I’ll help you. But you have to stop partying so much and stop coming in so late. Alright?”“Ok, I’ll do whatever you tell me. I promise.”***To Nora’s great surprise, Cierra lived up to her promise. She didn’t stop partying all together, but she kept it to the weekends. She managed to get in on weeknights before midnight without fail. And she actually studied, went to class, and did work.To Nora’s shock, she actually did well. Very well. When she got a 90% or better on all her midterms, Nora was floored. “I can’t believe you did so well!”Cierra looked a little hurt. “Why wouldn’t I? They were all easy.”Nora shook her head. “Cierra, I took some of these classes last semester. With the same professors. Like, in the Advanced Physics class, I got a seventy on my midterm. You got a ninety-three!”Cierra shrugged. “Well… Maybe it was because you were helping me.”“I never tutored you. I just made sure you studied and did your homework.” Nora shook her head. “Cierra… You never studied in high school, but you still passed. And now that you’re actually doing work in college, you’re doing great.”“So?”“Maybe you just needed to try. You could do… well, could do anything.”“Anything?” Cierra asked, suddenly looking awestruck.“Well, yeah. Anything, I guess. Right now, you’re just taking general classes. But what do you want to do, Cierra? What do you want to do with your life? Now’s the time to choose.”Cierra responded almost immediately. “I want to be a pod pilot.”***“Well,” her advisor said, looking at her records. “You don’t really have a history of grades showing you’d be eligible to become a pod pilot. It requires a lot of training and hard work.”“Yes, but this semester, I’ve actually been trying,” Cierra said. “I finally decided to apply myself. And I think that if I really had a challenge - like becoming a pod pilot would be - that I’d really shine.”The advisor nodded. “Well, Cierra, that’s admirable. But you need to understand that becoming a pod pilot isn’t just - ”“My parents are going to pay the full tuition,” she said.The advisor paused a moment, then slowly nodded. “Well… It can’t hurt to run the tests. You’ll also have to have an interview with a capsuleer admissions officer. We can set that up now, if you like…”***The interview with the capsuleer admissions officer went well. He agreed that Cierra hadn’t been challenged. “I see it all the time,” he said. “Some of the Federation’s best capsuleers didn’t realize what they could achieve until they really challenged themselves. Did you know Admiral Noir was only a yeoman most of his service in the war? But once he became a capsuleer, he really took off. That’s when he became an admiral, you know.”“Yeah, I learned that in school,” Cierra said.“As far as I’m concerned, you’re in,” the officer said. “But there is just one thing…”“What’s that?”“Well, your genetic scan came back at 83% compatible. That’s within allowable ranges. Usually, we do the cutoff at 75%. Anyone below that is simply not allowed to take up the training because of the risks of rejection or mind lock. And even a totally clean scan is not a guarantee against mind lock.”“So is there any problem?”