Who is my Miss Universe?  I once ran product from an office in the Gnash nebula, from Gnash to markets in the systems in the north.  We were shipping dollars, packaged with engineering, collateralised by the land rights.  There was a bit of a speculative boom going on around then, but not all of it dumb stuff.  People were paying enough.

The MI was done by this bored looking gal, who let slip she was the brains.  No looker but quite interesting, hair the colour of Mars.  We gave it a go in the lunchtimes before she trotted back to her childhood sweetheart who did something boring with funds on the other side of the zone.

Well, I was being bugged by the pricing.  We were covering ourselves but boom to bust is like day and night.  The MI was a bit dreamy, does not often happen that I do that to someone; so I asked her for a full conjecture on the pricing.

I asked her out of bed, she said nothing.  I asked her later in bed.  It had been okay, nothing special except she had clung to me a little tighter and looked a little dreamier.  So I brought it up, more as something to say.  I’m sometimes at a lost when it comes to romance.  She nods and says let’s do it.  I thought this might involve more action, so I looked encouraging.  She unclasped herself; throws on some clothes.  I trail after her negotiating zips and tags as we out towards the shipyards.

Me, dressed as we get to the company warehouse; there, no movement, empty without a scheduled flight for the day.  She moves us forward; our passes slide us through the duty security doors; the place is dirty with decay.  You notice these things more when the place is not functioning.

Packed up inside is an old barge.  We get on board and head down to the engineering cubicle cuddled up against the rusting fusion coils.  It’s really a space for one fat man, but we cosy.  When she bends over to insert her hand in the security start up her arse casually squeezes over me, warm and relaxed.  She was in pretty good shape.

I asked her what we were doing.  With her, the crazier she looks, the more likely she is to want to get straddled. Nice girl.

“It’s easier to create a copy of space time than work out your conjuncture properly.  Authorise this and we’ll do it.”  She pulls my hand onto the scan and the fusion coils sigh into life.

On the screen, floating in 7d is the universe, sitting in the fusion coils.

“That was quick,” was all I could manage.  More than half my mind was on her smell, a wisp of her hair tickling my nose.  I returned my hands to her hips.

“I am not sure I could make a mistake.”  I think she is smiling.

“You don’t seem too bothered by us breaking every treaty and doing the impossible.”  She leans back into me.

“If we shut down the engine it will collapse and there is no evidence that someone did the impossible.”

I am contemplating running my hands where it is not polite to say, but am not sure she would like to be groped.  This was a good call as she begins working on the terminal going: “You are a smart guy.”

You need to go now she says, so I go.  She mails me the market movements for the next five years.  I receive it the next day.  I don’t see her again.  Later I hear she is pregnant, later on she has had a baby and moved into a house on the other side of the zone.

I hope she is happy, but I guess she knew what she was doing.  She is right though.  You should not hand science over to the robots; for they know one link inside another reaches to infinity and there are supposed to be no forevers.