Helen rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and sat up. "Alarm off," she said and the high-pitched tone fell silent. She got up and walked to the computer terminal on the other side of the room. Holding the blanket around her, she called up her messages. After wading through the ads, she found a message from her teacher, Mrs. Crobople` (everyone called her Mrs. Crabapple when she wasn't in earshot). "Let's see what the old Crabapple has to say today," Helen said to herself. She groaned when she saw that the message was reminding her of the homework assignment that she hadn't done. Looks like I get to work in the car again, she thought. She ran back across the room, dropping her blanket on the bed and activated her ClosetComp. It automatically put together a matching outfit. Helen thought of the girls who bragged about how they didn't need a ClosetComp to make a very fashionable outfit. Helen thought those girls needed lives. The ClosetComp finished and the closet spat out an outfit. Helen quickly threw on the clothes and ran downstairs to eat breakfast.

After a quick and less than delicious breakfast Helen ran out to her aircar. "Hi Harold," Helen said to the CarComp, activating all of her modifications. "To School"

"I comply" the computer responded in it’s very human-like voice that Helen had programmed.

"Harold, work desk", she said getting comfortable in the left side seat where the controls would pop out in case of computer failure or street navigation beacon failure. The latter was common, the former was rare.

"I comply," the desk popped out of the dashboard.

Helen quickly finished her homework on the simple work desk computer terminal. After she finished she changed the work desk to calendar mode and counted the days until she would take the space flight to the mars colony to visit Cousin Chris and her family. One more week. One more week of Crabapple constantly lecturing about trivial disciplinary matters. One more week of IBEAs (her acronym for Incredibly Boring and Easy Assignments). Then three weeks of carefree time on Mars with Chris. Chris would probably drag her out to the airfield where Chris practiced flying her airship.

Helen's daydreaming was interrupted as the aircar slowed to as stop, still hovering a few feet above the ground. She knew what had happened even before Harold said it.

"Navigational Beacon offline," he said.

"Manual controls," she ordered, sighing, "so much for getting to school on time."

"I comply" responded the computer as the steering wheel and foot contacts appeared.

Helen pushed down on the forward contact, keeping her foot over the stop contact as she drove through the streets.

"Harold, map," she ordered

"I comply," the map appeared on the work desk. The map was usually for pressing in destinations for the CarComp, but it was very useful when you were trying to find your way somewhere. She watched the flashing car moving through the streets. She looked back up and groaned. The street was packed with traffic, none of it moving. She was hardly going to make it on time as it was. Now she had almost no chance. She saw that only a few of the cars were shifting there anti-gravs into turbo and flying over the traffic. There was plenty of room up there.

"Harold, Anti-grav to turbo," she said.

"I comply," he replied.

My next modification on Harold is going to be changing that infernal "I Comply", she thought as the car rose above the rest of the traffic. She pressed the forward contact and soared over the cars then turned towards the school on a street that held no aircars. She dropped to normal hover and started toward the school.

A few minutes after they left the traffic Harold informed Helen that they had entered an area where the navigation beacons were still online.

"O.K. Harold, take control and get us to the school," she said. The controls disappeared and the car stopped for just a second as Harold found his location relative to the navigational beacon. Then they started down the street again. Helen settled back into the chair as it re-conformed to her body. Her relaxation was short-lived, however, as about thirty seconds after Harold took control he announced that the car would not make it to the school at the current rate of power usage.

Helen groaned and silently asked herself What Next? Then aloud she said "Reduce hover to power conservation level" The car lowered to about half a foot above the ground. In a few seconds Harold repeated his "won't make it to destination" speech. "Reduce speed to 50% of normal velocity," she ordered. There was now no chance whatsoever of making it to school on time. Again Harold repeated his speech. "Activate emergency wheels, Harold," She ordered and hoped very strongly that this worked. She must have blown too much energy on that turbo burst to get over the traffic. The wheels folded out under the car. "Bring us down, Harold" The car landed on the ground and the wheels started turning. Helen held her breath but Harold didn't say anything. She sighed with relief until she looked at the chronometer on the aircar dashboard. She was already late for school and the wheels moved much slower than the anti-grav.

Mrs. Crabapple is going to be angry, I will probably get detention, she thought. She probably won't believe my story and will punish me even more for allegedly lying, and she wouldn't go to the trouble of checking Harold about it. The car arrived at school a few minutes later.

"Re-energize fully while I am at school. You might come a little bit later than usual, because I will probably get detention. I will try to contact you if I do, but I might not be able to," She said to Harold.

"I comply," he said. The aircar, now looking like a primitive groundcar, drove away and Helen entered the school to face the music with Crabapple.

"So glad you could join us, Miss Jones," Mrs. Crobople` said as Helen walked through the classroom door. She looked at the timer on her desk; "You are 12 minutes 33.2 seconds late, I assume that you slept through your alarm."

Helen took a deep breath, "No, A navigational beacon was out and I got stuck in traffic, so I had to use turbo to get though it, and I ran low on power so I had to drive the rest of the way on emergency wheels." Helen had to take another breath to replenish the air in her lungs

Mrs. Crobople` scowled, "No Excuses, you have detention after school for 12 minutes 33.2 seconds, now please take your seat." Helen took her seat. Crobople` started class again. "Now, when we were so rudely interrupted," she glared at Helen. "I was telling you to upload your homework and send it to my desk. Please do that now." Helen pulled out the small orange circular disk and put it into the slot. When she did so she also affixed a virus to the upload to old Crabapple's desk that would delete instead of send any message with detention, tardiness, or any of the teacher's alternate names for them in the subject or the body that was addressed to her family.

Helen smiled and thought, I'm not going to be grounded for nothing today. She pressed the teacher-buzzer on her desk and when called on she asked, "Mrs. Cra-Crobople` may I contact Harold, uh, I mean my CarComp and tell him-it of my coming tardiness?"

"No, you may not," Mrs. Crabapple said, she was obviously in a bad mood.

Karie, One of the leaders of what Helen called "The Herd" of girls whispered, just loud enough so that Helen could understand, "The CarComp is her only friend and she was late because she didn't want to leave in and now she wants to talk to it." All of the girls giggled.

"That's enough!" yelled Mrs. Crabapple, very angry now. Helen just quietly plotted revenge.

The rest of the morning was torture, but finally they were let out for recess. All of the class but Helen elected to go to the entertainment facilities. Helen stayed in the room, supposedly to work on an essay that was assigned a week before and wasn't due for another week. Helen had actually finished the essay only three days after it was assigned, but it provided a convenient excuse. "Hi Harold, " she said into her wrist communicator that connected to Harold.

"Greetings," came back.

"I am going to be 12 minutes 32.2 seconds late after school, so come that much later"

"I comply"

"Harold, Hacking mode"

There was a few seconds delay then an "I comply" came back. The hacking mode program was buried very deep in the CarComp program, below even the trash. The activation was a self-repeating code string hidden within the trash subprogram. She could risk its discovery much less than any of the other modifications. "Ok," she said over the wrist com. "logging onto network, find me Karie's save program."

"Found," came back.

"Re-route it though my terminal," she ordered. There was a pause as Harold went though all of her hacking tricks millions of times faster than she could have.

"Done"

Karie's desktop appeared. Helen grimaced at the wallpaper on it. It was an electronic poster of some teenage heartthrob who happened to be hot at the moment. All this trend stuff made her sick. She pushed an icon. Up came a request for general network password. That was the same as everyone else's so Helen just entered it. Then there was a request for a personal password. She let Herald loose on that and had it in seconds. She entered the online account for logging on the nets and sending messages. In minutes Karie no longer had an account. In a few more Helen was out, and by the end of recess the school computer thought that she had been working in a word processor the entire time.

When the rest of the class returned Karie soon noticed the problem. Helen was amused but she managed to look indifferent to the whole thing until Karie accused her of doing the deed. Helen was cracking up inside but she did a very good job of looking indignant. When Crabapple checked the computer and dropped the matter Karie was still not convinced, but she let it go rather than risk getting in trouble herself.

The rest of the day was uneventful, if boring to the extreme, until Karie and some of "The Herd" stopped Helen in the hall.

"You did it, I know it, and so does the Crabapple, that is why she didn't give me the 'false accusations' lecture. There was just no evidence," Karie accused

"You are holding a recorder and want me to say that I did it, just so you can run to Mrs. Crabapple and get me in trouble. Well I didn't do it. Now, are you going to let me out or not?" Karie had the distinct look of somebody who had shot a sonic pistol only to find it spewing music instead of harmful sonic waves. The Herd made room.

On the way home Helen transferred credits equal to the amount of a snack at a place where she ate after school sometimes to her hidden second account. Then she programmed Harold so that it would appear to anyone else that activated him, or to her if she activated him by saying anything other than "Hi Harold", that she had gone to that place. Her alibi was set. Now she sat back and thought about how rotten her day had been. Well, now it's looking up, I have some really fun things planed on the public nets, she thought. But the universe continued to conspire against her. The server for her Net access was down. After five or six hours of complete boredom she went to bed and sighed, thinking about how rotten her day had been.

The week went painfully slow, it turned out that the server problem took two days to fix. Helen made a lot of modifications on Harold from her room over her wrist communicator. But finally Friday came. The half-day at school seemed to take years longer than even a normal day. At last Crabapple excused them for their three week long off track time. The ride home went quickly. She ran inside and grabbed her two pieces of compression-luggage and said goodbye to her mom, dad, and brother. She then ran back to the air-car and leaped in almost before Harold could open the door.

As soon as the door was closed Helen ordered, "Harold, map."

"Will do," Harold said as the map appeared on the work desk. Helen found the spaceport on the map then pushed out a route to it. "Will do," Harold repeated as the car rose and began to move. Helen sat back into the self-conforming seat and smiled at her work. Harold was so much more pleasant now. Her thoughts wandered as the aircar raced through the streets. She was trying to remember who had invented the anti-grav and how when Harold informed her that they had arrived.

The received boarding information over the work desk and Harold drove into the hold of the correct Planet-ship. Harold opened the door and Helen stepped out, walking towards the elevator that would take her to the passenger deck. The elevator worked on a similar principal as the aircar, except that the elevator required much more power because it needed to create a displacement, not an equal level of gravity. Helen looked at the compression luggage in her hand. One of them held all the clothes necessary for one week. The other contained all her other necessities. In seconds the elevator reached her passenger deck. She stepped out and walked toward her assigned section. She had done this many times with her parents, but this was her first space flight by herself. She was a little nervous, not of the actual flight but of doing something stupid or otherwise embarrassing herself. Normally she wasn't easily embarrassed; she generally associated that emotion with The Herd and her stomach filled with qualms at the thought of being anything like them.

She was at her seat. She ran the decompression cycle on her ticket disk and pulled it out of the compression luggage. She stuck it in the seat and the seat opened. She sat down and the chair conformed to her. She sat back and waited for takeoff

She didn’t have long to wait, a few minutes later the pilot called over the intercom to prepare for takeoff. Helen set her seat's restraint webbing and prepared for the acceleration. It came several minutes later. She was pressed way back into her seat for a few seconds until the initial wave of inertia wore off. In a thirty seconds they cleared the atmosphere and were on their way to Mars.

Helen marveled at the amazing technology that had allowed this trip to happen. The ship used a system similar to the aircar or the elevator times 1000. It had an anti-grav so large it completely reversed the gravity so the ship acted as if the earth was in front of it instead of behind it. This required an enormous amount of power. This power was supplied by the solar panels that completely lined the ship (other than the windows) inside of the transparent titanium that made up the shell. Slowing down used the same process, only in reverse. When going to a larger planet to a smaller one, as they were now, this also required stations that sat behind where ships decelerate and added more reverse gravity to the effort. The ship then landed using much more gentile anti-grav work than that used with the slingshot drive.

Her musing complete, she decompressed and pulled out a small green disk that held a historical fiction novel about the Second Persian Gulf War. In that war, Iraq conquered all of the Middle East and most of North Africa, despite the efforts of many world powers. It changed the face of the world. It was also Helen's favorite subject of study and fiction. At the time, the United States of America (sort of a predecessor to the current North American Coalition) had been rocked by a recession and hadn't been paying any attention to the little Middle Eastern country. She found this especially interesting because currently economic matters were the main topic of concern in the NAC, and people were all but ignoring the terrorists that were beginning to get brave at the asteroid mining facilities. The only real difference between now and then was that now the economic concerns were going the other way, as the economy was booming.

She then settled down to read her book on her seat's desk and wait to arrive at Mars.

Helen was sleeping when the pilot came over the intercom and informed them that they were about to begin the deceleration cycle. Helen once again set her restraint webbing and braced herself for the abrupt stop. It came in a few seconds and she was thrown against the webbing. She hated this part.

As the ship slowed to a stop Helen noticed something outside her window. Several smaller ships were pulling up along side the giant commercial ship. They were moving on maneuvering thrusters, which were usually reserved for military ships that needed to maneuver and move without the benefit of a planet's gravity. As Helen craned her neck for a better view she noticed that the shells of the ships were bristling with weapons. She scanned for identifying marks. Then something caught her eye and her breath caught.

A dagger crossed with a sword.

The mark of the terrorists.

The weapon emplacements on the terrorist ships lighted up and the spinning spaceliner shook. The spinning stopped and the false gravity which was created by the centrifugal force stopped with it. Helen felt the vague sensation of falling. A few loose items floated around the cabin.

The captain came over the intercom, "We are under attack by the Liberation Defense Force. We are being asked to surrender. When we do, five units of LDF solders will come aboard and see us down to the spaceport that is now the center of LDF operations on the Mars Colony. We are told almost the entire Colony has fallen and the rest will fall shortly. I hope that when our Earth forces re-take Mars you will return home on Starpoint Spacelines," The pilot informed them. There was a little nervous laughter in the cabin and the tension level went down a bit. Helen relaxed a little, but for a different reason. The pilot had rather skillfully relaxed all the passengers. She knew that they were in good hands. Soon after the pilot finished his speech, the spinning slowly began again and gravity returned.

Helen sat back and resigned herself to the fact that she was going to be a hostage in the Mars War (or whatever the media decided to call it). Then she laughed a little. Mars was the Roman god of war. How fitting, she thought.

Then her eye caught her wrist communicator.

"Hi Harold," she said into it.

"Hello Helen," this greeting was another of her recent modifications.

"We are being taken captive by the Liberation Defense Force, I have no intentions of just sitting as a good little hostage, though. As soon as we land we are busting out of here. Download full maps of the Mars Colony and power up to full before we land, I will come down, hopefully with some sort of weapon we can put on top of the car." She explained.

"Will do"

Adrenaline pulsed though Helen's veins as she unhooked her restraint webbing and went over her plan. She made for the ship's small armory. That would be one of the first places that the LDF men would go once the cockpit was secure. She had to beat them there. She raced to where she remembered it being. Sure enough, there it was. Unfortunately there was one guard wearing a uniform that had the LDF symbol on the chest. He was carrying a strange little hand weapon. She briefly considered giving up and going back to her seat but decided against it. She could take the man by surprise and knock the weapon away. She sneaked as close to him as she safely could. Then she leaped up at him very quickly. Before he could react she wrested the weapon from his grasp and sent it spinning way down the hall.

She dropped back and into a combat stance she had learned in her brief Aikido training. The terrorist charged her but she stepped out of the way, grabbed his arm, and let his momentum swing him into a wall. He was knocked out cold.

She walked into the armory, silently thanking the LDF people for blowing out the lock. She was disappointed to find it all but empty. All the hand weapons were gone and so was anything that was small enough for a single person to use. She was about to give up when she noticed that there were several units that looked like they were supposed to go on an aircar. That was exactly what she wanted.

She walked out of the armory, carrying the large weapon. She saw that the guard was starting to come to. She retrieved his weapon and knocked him on the head with it, hard. He once again went limp. She broke the tiny hand weapon because she had no idea of how to use it. In a few minutes she was affixing the larger weapon to the sunroof on her aircar.

She had gotten it stuck in pretty good and had played around with the controls a little when the false gravity lessened slowly into nothingness. The ship was preparing for it's final decent. She sat down into her seat and put on the restraint webbing. In about fifteen minutes they were down. Helen stood up and put her head in the weapon's control mechanisms.

As soon as Helen felt the light Mars gravity, she yelled "Go!" The car lifted and Helen shot the exit ramp door open. The cargo bay was only a few feet above the ground and so there wasn't much of a dip. "Full speed, Harold!" she shouted. She swung the weapon around and blasted two weapons emplacements that were beginning to fire on the escaping car. And my parents thought that all those net games weren't healthy, Helen thought triumphantly. The aircar raced for the fence that marked the edge of the LDF compound. Helen blew a hole in the fence and the aircar soared through. After a few minutes of flying away from the compound she relaxed and began to plan her next move.

She looked at a local newscast on the 2-d screen on the workdesk. Apparently there was only one spaceport left and the ships were already moving into position to shut it down. She thought of where Chris and her family would be. Chris' dad was in the reserves so he would probably be in the guerilla residual force or GRF. Chris mother, sister, and Chris were probably going to be making their way to the last spaceport.

Helen detailed a route to look for Chris and family and the aircar got moving again. She was lucky the car was at full power, as she was forced to remain on turbo most of the time.

She was floating above a large stream of aircar traffic when she saw Chris' mom's aircar. There was a quick conversation shouted out of open windows. It took a while but Helen finally convinced Chris' mom that they wouldn't stand a chance of getting to the spaceport. The two cars pulled out of the lane that headed towards the airport and went to the empty one heading back to town, looking for one of the shelters that would surely be opening.

Helen switched the aircar to power conservation mode and made it to the nearest energy station. She energized the aircar and even though the station was abandoned she transferred the correct amount of credits. She caught up with Chris and her family and they finished their way to the closest shelter. The Occupation of Mars, as it was later called, had begun.

Helen woke up and looked around. It took her a few seconds to remember where she was and why. She looked at the televid across the room. It was showing some LDF propaganda, which was all that was ever on. A few people were gathered around it, making fun of it, for complete and total lack of anything better to do. Helen stepped over a few sleeping bodies and walked to the televid.

"…the North American Coalition seems to have good intentions, but it is an iron fist covered by a velvet glove!" The LDF leader was saying. Obviously prerecorded applause followed.

"I wonder how long it took him to come up with THAT one," Helen said as she walked up. A few of the people turned around and looked at her. A few people giggled. Helen then saw Chris in the little crowd.

"Hi Helen," she said. "C'mon, sit down."

Helen sat down next to Chris and turned back to the televid. As the leader continued Helen thought about Chris. Her real name was Christina but everybody called her Chris, with the sole exception of her parents, and that was only when they were angry. Chris' passion was flying. Every day Chris would go out to the airfield and fly around in her small airship. She even drove her aircar to school manually. Helen had programmed the CarComp not to reveal that on one of her past trips.

Helen realized that Chris was talking to her. "What?" she asked. "I'm sorry, I was thinking"

Chris sighed, "I guess, sometimes you can be so spacey. What I said was that we haven't had a chance to talk, we should go over to the corner and chat."

"Ok," Helen replied. They stood up and walked away from the televid. They knew what was happening in each other's lives thanks to net messages, but they rarely got the chance to just sit and talk. They had about a half an hour when somebody near the televid jumped up and ran to the small group of residual guerilla troops that was in charge of this shelter. The leader of the troops looked solemn as the woman talked to him. He stood up, activated the intercom and began to speak.

"I have just received terrible news," he began. "The LDF terrorists have used a computer wall to stop all outgoing communications. All they let through was a forged transmission telling of a planet-wide communication loss. Earth doesn't know we're out here." He then turned off the intercom. People were rushing to the televid to see what was happening, the earth help that had seemed so close suddenly gone. Chris started walking over there but Helen grabbed her arm and pulled her away

"Follow me," Helen told her

"Where are we going?" Chris asked, her face filled with sudden confusion.

"Just follow," Helen replied

"Ok. Whatever you say."

Helen darted through the crowded shelter to the building that was holding the aircars. She raced over to her aircar and slid into the control seat.

"Hi Harold," she said to the CarComp

"Hello Helen," he replied.

"Harold, hacking mode"

Chris looked at her like she was crazy, but Helen ignored her

"Done"

"Log into the Mars nets"

"There is a blockage."

"Shoot," Helen cursed. "Try to break it." Helen didn't expect Harold to be able to get through but she had to try.

There was a pause. "Failed," came Harold's voice. Helen rubbed her temples and stared at the desk, her mind racing. Then she had an idea. "Harold, look for a password set-up in the Mars nets"

"Found," he said simply.

"Get into it."

Soon he did. They were on the nets.

"Ok, search for the blockage program," Helen said, adrenaline pumping through her veins. She brushed some hair out of her eyes and stared at the desk, which was now flashing around looking for a blockage program. Suddenly it had it.

"Got it," said the CarComp.

"Search for the communications blockage subprogram."

"Got it."

"Get into the controls, get through any passwords"

A password popped up and Harold got it. Then they were in. Helen typed furiously, quickly changing the communications program to let anything with the word "banana" in the subject through the communications nets. She activated Harold's "Out and cover tracks" subprogram and sat back into the chair, sighing with released tension.

Chris stared at her in awe, "WOW! I didn't know that you were THAT good!"

As the two cousins were walking back into the main shelter, Chris leaned over to Helen, pointing to the GRF leader. "Well, go up there."

"You're coming with me."

"Fine by me"

They walked up to the front of the shelter and informed the GRF people of what Helen had accomplished. Soon the GRF people had called it to GRF HQ. After it was announced on the intercom, the entire shelter erupted with cheers. It was several minutes before the refugees finally quieted down. By then Helen was thoroughly embarrassed, but that couldn't take out the feeling of pride she had for restoring hope for all those people.

The rest of the occupation was kind of a calm boredom. There was no other real excitement. But in the few weeks following the triumphal liberation at the hands of the joint space fleets, Helen would have much preferred that boredom to the fame and resulting media attention she received. From the moment Harold drove into the hold of the Inter-Planetary ship to the time she was finally ready to go back to school, reporters swamped her constantly. Her parents didn't help either, as they never missed a chance to point out that Helen was their daughter.

I never thought I would say this, but I am actually looking forward to going to school, She thought as she ran past a few residual reporters to the car.

"Hi Harold"

"Hello, Helen"

"Map"

"Will do"

The map appeared on the workdesk and Helen began to draw out an alternate route to school. Suddenly there was a pounding on her window.

"Would you answer a few questions, please?" shouted the reporter.

"Sorry, but I am going to be late for school!" Helen shouted back.

"It will only take a second!"

"Sorry! Harold, go!"

Helen watched the reporter grow smaller. She breathed a sigh of relief. Unfortunately for her sanity, as she was taking that breath, her eyes caught the chronometer on the desk. She was going to be late for school. But, unusually, this didn't distress her. It was something of a grounding back into the world. She almost hoped Crabapple would give her detention and then her parents would ground her. It would be a sign that everything was back to normal.

She arrived at school, now reassured that everything would be the same again. She had had her fifteen minutes of fame and now all was once again right with the world. Alas, it was not to be.

"Sorry I'm late Mrs. Crobople`, I was swamped by reporters at my house and had to take an alternate route to school," Helen said as she walked into the classroom.

Mrs. Crobople` was not living up to her nickname. "Oh, that’s all right. Go ahead and take your seat," she said, making sympathetic noises. Helen was starting to realize that things were not going to be just like they always had been.

The day continued on. It went from bad to worse for Helen. Mrs. Crobople` had decided to do the entire day's studies on the Occupation of Mars. She seemed determined to embarrass Helen in every way possible. At every opportunity she pointed out how Helen had saved Mars from the "Evil Terrorists". Helen was about ready to run out of the room when recess finally arrived.

She walked out of the room towards the rec. facilities. As she arrived, Karie, backed up by the herd, intercepted her.

"Hello Helen. How are you today?" She asked, seeming very interested.

"As if you care," said Helen, blowing past Karie and heading for a virtual run machine. Most of the herd followed Helen, leaving Karie at the door to the rec. room glaring. As much as Helen despised being an object of the herd's affection, she couldn't help but feel a little bit of triumph for beating Karie at her own game.

Despite this, Helen knew better than to get sucked into the lure of the "herd" and ignored them. To her immense surprise, they were still there when she emerged from the virtual run machine at the end of recess. She once again ignored them; unaware that this aloofness was only making them adore her all the more.

School continued in this same pattern for the rest of the day. Helen sneaked out to her aircar to avoid another run-in with "the herd". She sighed with relief as she returned home and found it lacking reporters.

She walked into the house to find her parents dressing up, as if for something special.

"What's the occasion?" Helen asked.

"Don't you remember? The award presentation!" replied her mother.

"Oh yeah, I forgot. Do I HAVE to go?"

"Of course you do! You are getting the highest award of merit that can be given to a civilian! Don't you want to go?" Her mother replied, sounding shocked.

"Not really."

"Sure you do, now go upstairs to your room and put on the clothes on your bed. I already had the ClosetComp pick them out." Her mother ordered, pushing aside Helen's protest. Helen sighed and did what she was told.

It was a quick aircar drive to the province capital, where the presentation would occur. Helen was escorted quickly to the platform where the award would be given. Some politician or another gave a long-winded speech about heroism and rising above the call of duty. Helen pulled at her uncomfortable clothes, thinking about how much she wished that she were somewhere else. Finally, the politician finished his speech, gave Helen her medal, and ushered her to the podium. As she looked out over the cheering crowd, her vision started to go black. As she began to faint, she had only one thought before she lost consciousness; Why did everybody have to get so weird?

End