My holo broke down today. I don't use it often; the comm channels are usually enough. When dealing with irate newbie squadmates, for instance, turning on the holo and having it sync up with theirs takes entirely too much time. Especially when all you really want to say is "Shut up, would you?"
The holo's real area of expertise is in negotiations. By 'negotiations', I of course mean 'haggling'. When trying to get a quick contract remotely or arguing over the price of cargo, the holo is the best way to go about doing it. That way they can see you the way you are, and you can see them. Of course, one of the reasons I'm considered to be rather talented at such negotiations is that I have, on more than one occasion, tore up my holo and re-built it with certain modifications. I tend to appear, on the holos of others, about a foot taller than I actually am. Or shorter, should their particular culture find that to be more impressive. Because my culture finds it entertaining to look down on people - or at least, I do - they likewise appear to be a foot shorter than me. It's enormous the psychological advantage this conveys.
Given the rather large amount of work I've performed on the unit that almost certainly is far out of the scope of its warranty, it's not exactly surprising that it broke down, but it certainly could have chosen a better time. I'd been talking to my first real person since Poln. Of course, when I say 'person' I mean 'sentient being', as there's not exactly a whole lot of spacefarers who are my own species. Still, she looked vaguely similar and we were having a nice conversation when the unit futzed out. Not, of course, before making me appear to become a giant orange monster of some sort. Before I could hack the unit back into submission, she was gone.
It was just as well; en route my translator finally got back to me with details about her species - turns out that our reproductive organs are quite incompatible.
Hey, it's been a while, okay? These questions naturally occur when you've been adrift for several months.
Aside from my ulterior motives, I'd been using the conversation as a way to get caught up from what I've missed. I could have done the same thing using the various newsfeeds whose purpose it was to do exactly that, but like I said, I had ulterior motives. I didn't learn very much; minor things mostly. Certain cargoes were more or less valuable on certain planets due to certain events, such and such an ambassador to somewhere was sidetracked to some other place, and - much to my shock and surprise - Poln and Anor were at war again!
The conversation with the other pilot was nice, really, but what I was actually looking forward to was people. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those xenophobes who think all other species are scum; I'm quite certain, in fact, that my species is just as scummy as the rest of them. It's just that, after a while without seeing any of your own people, you do start to miss them. For me, it'd been three years.
I'd decided it had been too long. I was going home.