orbital hammership

The great creaking mass of the aging hammership spins onwards through the void.....months from Earth orbit, months to go to Mars. The spinning keeps a semblance of gravity on the 14 inhabited decks....up the shaft of the hammer the gees fade away....at the bulb at the other end from the head, the almost obsolete mass of the fusion power source is the center around which the whole thing rotates. A hammer of the gods, hurled out between the planets, ever orbiting, never stopping. You couldn't stop the damn thing if you wanted to, short of blowing it up. But that's a problem for the powers that be. All I have to think about is doing my job, fulfilling my contract....which is to "administer the educational program subsection L4....liberal arts (other)" Not science, that's for sure...not language, or fine arts, or law or economics or diplomacy....just "other"....like philosophy and religion maybe? And I don't have to teach, just administer, machines do the teaching. Well, they like to be called "intelligent programs"....but they act like machines, as far as I can tell. From my office window I can see out over part of the campus....there are little bits of carefully placed flora, and lots of fake marble and pseudo-sandstone surface.....some kind of bastard beaux-arts architecture I've never been able to figure out or classify.....to me it all looks like a movie set from a 1930's flick about a robot future.....but it's here now, dammit. Well, my office hours are coming to an end for the day, and I can shortly begin to wend my way towards the Down Lounge, to trade the boredom of "work" for the boredom of "leisure"......At least down there I can get a drink.