CASE [GL]

I was glad Luna seemed to be enjoying the food as much as I was. It definitely had been a good decision to take Roland and Martha up on their offer to come and eat dinner with them. This is something we will not regret any time soon. 

“Can we ask you a couple of questions?” Martha asked, looking at Luna and I while we were enjoying the food. 

“Can Martha ask a couple of questions?” Roland added. Great comical relief as always. 

“Sure thing, I don’t mind at all.” I nodded. 

Luna nodded along too but didn’t say anything as she was just chowing down on a potato croquette. 

“Where did you two meet?” 

“Actually, not that terribly long ago, all things considered. We met each other for the first time right before we set off for our mission. She was the last minute replacement of the officer who’d normally sail with us.” 

“I replaced the Executive Officer.” Luna added after she had cleared her mouth. 

It was clear from the looks on their faces that Martha and Roland didn’t really know what that meant. 

“I command the ship, and the executive officer is basically my right-hand-woman.” 

“Oh.” Martha and Roland exclaimed together. 

“So when you are sick, it would be Luna who would take over command?” 

“Yes.” I nodded. 

“Are relationships allowed on board of ships? Wasn’t there regulations about that? Like in the movies?” Martha continued. 

I nodded again. “There used to be, but ever since the war ended, and we turned our direction outwards into outer space, that rule was scrapped. Of course there’s still regulations that you still need to show decorum and if things go badly, that you keep everything together. Otherwise, you can get sanctioned. Especially if because of your actions, things go wrong.” 

“Wouldn’t it then have been better to just not allow it at all?” Roland asked. “Not that I have anything against your relationship, of course.” He was quick to add that. 

I shrugged. “The Admiralty saw that with very long space voyages, it would be almost impossible to keep that up. You need to imagine, instead of months on board ships, these journeys might end up taking years. It’s only because of circumstances that we’ve returned as soon as we did. Outright forbidding relationships would just not work out in practice. It’s better to regulate relationships rather than forbid them and have them happen clandestinely anyway. That’s what they did on the early missions to Mars, too. They tried to forbid it at first, but that didn’t end up working out too well in the end either. It turns out that if you put people together for long enough, relationships tend to happen to varying degrees.” 

“I think having someone who you can lean onto has very big advantages.” Luna added. 

“And that’s true too.” I agreed. “When shit hits the fan… of course, everyone on the ship is family in a way. But when you need to pour out your heart… It’s nice to have someone who’s not only the ship’s doctor.” 

“Were there a lot of difficulties on your journey so far?” Roland asked. 

“Not many we can really talk about, but we have lost people.” I nodded. “Exploring space is dangerous even under the best of circumstances.” 

“That must have been really tough on you, considering how much you care about people.” Martha commented. 

“It wasn’t easy, but thanks to Luna, I pulled through.” I smiled at my girlfriend, who in return laid her hand on top of mine. 

“We pulled through together.” 

 

We talked on about our relationship for a while longer, while obviously not disclosing the more secret parts of our journey. But luckily, Luna and I were rather good about keeping the wraps on things and we both complemented each other very well. While we talked, we had soon finished most of the dinner.  Before we started on dessert however, we did need some time to let our food sink a little bit, otherwise eating more was going to be rather difficult. 

“Would you like to do something while we take it easy?” Roland asked, he directed himself more towards Luna than to me. 

“I’m not sure, but you definitely don’t need to entertain me, I’m happy enough with the company.” 

“How about a little quiz?” Martha proposed. 

“A quiz?” I asked. 

Martha looked at me with a smile. “Roland and I bought this kind of quiz game with over 2 million different questions. With more being added every so often. We’ve not really had a lot of opportunities to play it yet with the two of us.” 

“You can steal each others questions or swap people’s question themes too, but that’s also more fun when you are with more than just two players.” Roland explains. 

I looked at Luna. “That sounds fun, what do you think?” 

She nodded. “Yeah, let’s try it out, it sounds intriguing.” 

“There’s your answer.” I smiled. 

Our two grandparently hosts went out to find the game, leaving Luna and myself alone for a while. 

“Are you good at quizzes?” She asked. 

“Hmmm, not particularly. You might even beat me, even though you’ve not been around for too long.” 

“Don’t sell yourself short. You know a lot, too. You always explain things to me.” 

“Well, I suppose so, but you know who would be really good at this?” 

“Eva?” 

“Exactly.” I chuckled. “That woman has a very big encyclopedic memory. She really does know a lot of stuff.” 

“And I guess Ellie would do great too.” 

“Ellie participating would be really unfair compared to us normal humans.” 

“Yeah… Maybe we should think about games we can play together with Ellie, she might like that a lot.” 

“That’s a good point.” I scratched my chin for a second while I was thinking. Video games would also be rather unfair because her motor skills would be through the roof if she had some kind of body. Things like chess would also be way out of our league if she would play against us. That doesn’t leave many things… 

“I asked a rather difficult question, didn’t I?” 

“You did.” I laughed. “But it’s an important one nonetheless, I want Ellie to feel included and playing games is a good way of doing so. Let’s think about that some more later.” 

“Mhmm.” She nodded. 

 

Roland and Martha came back carrying a box which contained the games computer specifically designed for the quiz, together with the playing pieces. 

So every round, everyone had to pick 4 themes blindly out of a bag. After that, you had to place these four themes in order. The first theme would earn you one point if you answered the question correctly, the last one would earn you four. Roland and Martha then explained that everyone would also get a couple of special skills each round. One, for which you only have one token, could be used to swap a theme between you and your opponent. If your opponent has a history question, and you are strong in history, you could swap that theme with one of the themes you are weak at. You could also use this skill to swap themes in between players. Your other two tokens could be used to answer a question of a theme one of your opponents has to answer. Assuming that player got the question wrong, you could answer it instead and gain a point for that question. Three points if you placed your token before the question was asked, one point if you place your token after the question is asked. 

It did sound like a lot of fun to sabotage someone, but it is still not that much of a dick move because the player still has the opportunity to answer a question and get points. In a way, this game revolves around lighthearted sabotage. 

And like that, we started to play our game while we waited for some room to return to our stomachs. Most of the questions were rather doable, but just like any quiz, some questions were so hard that you thought to yourself “who in the name of the Goddess knows these things?” 

Luna actually managed to tag along in points really well, despite her otherworldly heritage. Mostly due to her making very smart bets and very clever swaps with us. She had quickly identified the areas Roland and Martha were both good and bad at and was using that knowledge to her fullest advantage, often not even taking the questions for herself, but just swapping themes in between them. Martha knew a lot about culture, so often Luna would swap that theme away with science questions. 

All the while keeping a rather tight lid on what she herself knew a lot or very little about. Of course, I knew where those positive and negatives were, but I wouldn’t just tell that to Roland and Martha. 

In the final round of the game, however, Roland made the crucial error of swapping between his wife and Luna for Luna’s final question. Luna got a television and culture question, just four points needed for her to finish first. And the question at hand could not have been more fortuitous, either. A question about a somewhat obscure Pimsey movie about space pirates. When the question was asked, I knew it was a good game, well played for my girlfriend. As she easily answered it. 

“That’s Bounty World!” She exclaimed enthusiastically. The games quiz computer erupted in digital confetti. 

“Congratulations, Luna, you have won the game. And to all the others, better luck next time.”  

I clapped along and gave my girlfriend a congratulatory kiss on the cheek. Roland and Martha congratulated her too. It had been a very fun game, after all. 

“Should we celebrate Luna’s victory with some cake?” Roland proposed. 

“I think we should.” Martha nodded and both Luna and I nodded along too.

-Let’s see what Luna thinks tastes sweeter, Martha’s cake or her well deserved victory.-