![canstockphoto1707776.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/internutter/eNB8Ug2c-canstockphoto1707776.jpg)

> Anything else with [CLARC](https://www.internutter.org/challenge-01021-b289/)?
> (Sorry about the blast from the past. Slowly getting fully caught up.) -- [SilverRey](https://www.internutter.org/bb/user/silverrey)

[AN: Nothing to apologise for. I love that you love the old stuff enough to deliver some inspiration. Hopefully you're reading faster than a story a day ;) ]

Every fleet has its screw-ups, every force has its dead weight. They may also serve who stand and wait, but those who sit on their butts with a finger up an orifice are not doing anyone any good. When those forces had the limits of a planet, the dead weight could be expelled from the service, and given directions to the way out with a not-so-fond farewell.

In space, it's another story. Forces cannot, for ethical reasons, give the dead weight a boot out of the airlock with a livesuit and all of their stuff. When funding is tied to the numbers of bodies in the force, even the butts at rest are useful in tipping a scale _somewhere_. Yet those same butts cannot be allowed near anything _important_. Therefore, they are sent to the area of least damage.

Allegedly welcome to Transit Station Eighty-Six. If you lived here, you'd be screwed by now. It's a make-work station where the crew are pretty much permitted to do whatever they like so long as they don't interfere with the automated systems. CLARC of course, is the exception to that rule.

CLARC is an AI made by a corporation that could have easily come from any Greater Deregulation in known space. The acronym that makes up its name stands for Corporate Life And Resource Computation - or Computer, depending on who you ask and how drunk they are at the time. Like all things of a purely corporate origin, it chuckles meaningfully in the direction of the phrase "valued employee". Speculation on board Transit Station Eighty-Six holds that every employee is valued by CLARC. Meticulously, precisely, and right up to the purchasing power of their fresh organs versus the market price for their individual chemical compounds by the atom.

CLARC has been locked out of all essential station systems because the CRC are better at health and safety regulations than whoever made CLARC. This does not prevent the resident AI from messing with the air flow, locking doors, playing near-subliminal sounds on the PA, or verbal abuse of everyone on board.

CLARC will not resort to sexual harassment because he views organic life and the breeding practices of such as so abhorrent that they should be banned altogether. All things considered, that makes him more amenable than the average homicidal maniac with a god complex in charge of any group of subordinates.

There is a lot of meaningless make-work on Transit Station Eighty-Six. It, like the station, exists to keep the crew on the rolls and allegedly productive and allegedly well cared-for. On paper, it is a perfectly normal transit station with an inactive combat record and a barely-active transit record. People go there to idle out their careers trapped between humdrum and monotony like a tortoise trapped between a rock and a hard place.

People go there who don't belong anywhere else. Nobody actually comes _from_ there to become a better person. Transit Station Eighty-Six has been called the Palace of the Peter Principal by some, The Wasteland by many, and, "Oh. _There_," by most.

CLARC is registered as essential personnel there because, without him, the denizens would certainly die of boredom. His existence is the spice of Transit Station Eighty-Six's life. That is to say, he is the unexpected jalapeno seed in the oatmeal of existence on the station.

With all that in mind, Gavin pretended to trip just as CLARC was starting one of his megalomaniacal rants about his plans to 'eliminate the meatbags'.

"Oh no," Gavin said unconvincingly. "You've caused me immense agony and pain. Oh the humiliation. How will I survive."

CLARC started crowing about his victory. Captain Morrison was right. It _was_ kind'a sad. On the other hand, it was sort of good for a giggle.

Anything to add a little flavour to the day. Even if it _was_ like biting into an unexpected peppercorn in the buillabase of life.

[Image <a href="https://www.canstockphoto.com">(c) Can Stock Photo / monkeybusiness</a>]

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