The course in navigation was conducted by an incredibly cheerful woman by the name of Raven with a little resemblance to Sanya [Hey! I'm WAY cuter! - Sanya]. She was a typical navigator with a generally empty head - to all tricky questions she answered with “No idea! It's the instruction manual time!” or “No idea! It's simulation app time. Let's hope it doesn't shit itself!”

Also, Raven was the first astronaut with LSS (Long Shift Syndrome). A very common astronauts’ occupational disorder. In general, she behaved like she is still on a duty, on a space vessel. She moved with a weird shuffling pace, didn't always correctly judge her jumps (she loved to jump up on a table), and was constantly checking for a helmet strapped to her thigh.

Raven: K-SAF (Katz Space Armored Forces). Rainy Evening. NS (Navigator Specialist) Raven.

[Standard self-identification: “SAF with affiliation. Specialization. Call-sign, - Rise]

Raven: Well, well, well, what do we have here! Interesting group. Very interesting! I wanted to start my lecture with sharp and accurate comments describing each navigator and pilot. But I forgot everything. Oh, well, let's write it out as a déformation professionnelle. [No, not it's not, - Desi] [Yes, it is. A navigator must keep huge amounts of information in his head. But everything will become useless once the calculations complete. Look up - apply - forget - next, - Lis].

Raven: It's a general overview time, so that's why you are all here. And so, today I will make sure that all of you will understand that Navigator Specialist is the most important specialist on a vessel. So, you must always greet your navi with a warm hug, and a passionate kiss and do not forget to pat his head every day!

Raven: In three-dimensional space, there is only one scariest thing among them all. Everything else is just small and unimportant. We can wipe out every-bloody-thing. We were born to undo stars into relict radiation! MID-types do not know any fear! MID-types do not know any shame! We will attack overwhelming forces. We will retreat from angry civilians.

Raven: But…

Raven took a dramatic pause.

Raven: But. There is one thing. Just one thing to fear out. And it is to get lost.

Raven: You NEVER want to hear from your NS a phrase: “Huh? Where are we?”.

Raven: The three-dimensional space is intimidatingly huge. We still don't have any reliable system to locate and identify our current position at the current time.

Raven: Unfortunately, navigators do not have any fascinating magical powers to bend reality and locate anything anywhere at any time.

Raven: There are 36 recording devices on the MID-type. Each device has an independent replacement. Every circuit and every system are duplicated inside the devices. All the devices are recording things all the time. Lots of things. Relic radiation, the spectrogram of nearest stars, the topography of nearest planets and asteroids, the position of visible stars, the appearance of galaxies, map the ambient space heating, routes, readings of the gravitational compass, the routes of nearby vessels, speeds, shapes and reliefs of nearby passing things. The MID-type carries a huge and clumsy database of all the space bodies and their routes. Because, at any given time, we need to know where we are. At least approximately.

Raven: Pinholes and beacon synchronization duties are small inconveniences of the huge workload. The main NS's duty is to process all available information and try to identify our current location. Even in combat. Especially in combat. NS must always check and double-check the current and imminent location. The life of the vessel and the crew are depending on it. Automatics are useless! It was so useless that I turned it off. Like, everything was fine and dandy, we were flying through Katz Sector, and suddenly it announces that we are falling into the bloody Sol star. Where the Katz Sector, and where the Sol Sector, eh? We don't have a bloody Jupiter to make the gravitational compass go slow and mad.

Raven: Just anyone can open a pinhole in the locator sphere - choose two points and adjust the alpha and delta angles. The beta angle can be played with, but it is better not to. Then set the Russell coefficient goes to the max! The acceptable Russell's range is a little bit tricky, but, whatever, to the top, and off we go. If nothing is going on around you, you just can do nothing, just check that everything is in the green zones and stable. If you need to go through the pinhole immediately after or during the pinholling, apply more corrections, think about accelerations, take into consideration the nearest massive bodies, not that it all is very important, adjust due to the active pinhole nearby and you are good to go. Do not forget about active pinholes nearby! Everything goes mad for a couple of seconds because of it.

Raven: That's it. Everything else is fully automated.

Raven: Story-time! One day we almost fall into the star! Things happen, don't get mad at your NS. Everything was fine, like, the alpha angle was right, and the beta is a little lower. We went through the pinhole and the wild star appeared right in front of us! Terrifying! The shields went down, the light hull started to melt, the active hull melted right away, and every system on the front died. With maximum speed available for a living person, I've calculated pinhole anywhere away from here, throw it at the pilot and him, without asking a thing or waiting for a confirmation, just used it. And we emerged alive. Scarface, yes?

Lis: Shouldn't we wait until the end of the current pinhole to open the next one?

Raven: Yay! A question! On the subject! From the navigator! Nice! Very nice.

Raven: Well... it is dangerous. Sort of dangerous. The active pinhole will mess up the systems, so you have to do lots of adjustments and make lots of guessing. But sometimes you have to do it. But not every time! Cadet Sly Eyes, yes?

Yin: Can we somehow get rid of guessing? It doesn't sound safe at all. After all, we have powerful computers and stuff…

Raven: Well, yes, computers and stuff are powerful. But not powerful enough. An active pinhole changes the environment a lot. It is, literally, a hole. A mathematical abstraction in the real world! How crazy it is, huh? And in order to calculate all the changes in the world that came in we must calc the behavior of the entire universe.

Raven: Just like with the weather forecasts on planets. To predict the weather in a single city with 100% accuracy, you have to emulate the entire planet. A flap of a butterfly's wings in the suburbs of the White Tower causes a hurricane off the coast of Saratoga.

Raven: So, you will work with what you have. And guess around. A thoughtful guess is more powerful than a purely mathematical model. I'm not speaking from my beautiful ass; I'm speaking from my hard-boiled experience!