The Slider Insider

In some respects, things were more difficult with the clear channel, since it became possible to close the loop immediately. The slide-link worked both ways, and made confirmations wiggle-perfect. What it did for confrontations was another thing entirely. While it took some work to keep the link functioning, it was not an impossible burden. Nevertheless, with communication speed came a lack of consideration.

I found myself burning idle time on the channel rather than encode the first reply. Sure, I could encode faster than most other Electrons out there, and in this domain, the Chatty's had the edge. This is when I began to understand the absurdity of rapidity over due consideration. The other advantage to just receiving is that they usually just convince themselves. Since this was training, we had all the time it would take and then some.

While I was eager to conduct range and bandwidth tests for this new slide-link modulation technique, the Chatty's were no where near mission ready. Besides, I was going to have to hang on to them here on my Shorty since the Pairs were about to reap their reward for service excellence. Random resolution time was fast approaching, and I got two taps on the navigation channel when the photon detectors shut down.