I am actually submitting this for an upper-division psychology course on conceptions of the mind, so please, be honest!

This is the first in my Tales series, a group of short vignettes featuring each member of the crew. The rest can be found here:

Wash, Mal, Kaylee, Zoë, Simon, Inara, Jayne, Book

Rated PG for some violence/disturbing imagery.

Go-se=Crap

*****

River Tam was having a very bad day.

Of course, “day” was largely an anachronistic term that carried no meaning in the ‘verse anymore. It was a term used on Earth-That-Was, a term used to describe a twenty four hour period. Suns rose and fell at different rates now, and “day” was just an old word that people still used because it was convenient. Time was a subjective thing to begin with, and it helped for there to be a common language, even if it didn’t mean a thing in actuality. “Day” was a figure of speech, just like “show your true colors,” everyone used it and no one knew what it meant. But, nevertheless…

River Tam was having a very bad day.

That didn’t mean that River wasn’t acutely aware of exactly how long she’d been here. In fact, she had been at the Alliance’s “academy” for five hundred fifty nine days, six hours, fifteen minutes, seventeen seconds, eight, no, nine nanoseconds. She considered calculating her total attendance down to the picosecond, but she’d done that earlier and it had ceased to amuse her. She settled for examining the room: gray walls devoid of decoration, a plain white single-person bed, a gray metal writing desk with chair.

This had been her living space ever since she’d arrived here. Since then, it had taken on many forms. When she first arrived, it was a transport into a larger ‘verse. It was open,