Interview with Rei - Part 7 of 10

As Steve Fisch and I get the scripts ready to sell Rome's Revolution as a streaming series, he asked me for a lot of background information that I did not have. So I took some time out to interview Rome and Rei. Here is Rei's interview, part 7 of 10.
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Interviewer: I can clearly see that that episode passed.
Rei: Yeah. The Vuduri were there to find out why the stars were disappearing, what we now know was the Stareaters, but they had given up on the search and packed everything up when the very star they were there to observe disappeared.
Interviewer: That seems disappointing.
Rei: They were besides themselves. All that time and effort down the tubes. Ursay, the base commander, needed Rome to help try and retrieve some data. Well, Rome wanted nothing to do with the Vuduri either. She was so mad! I had to come and sweet talk her into helping them. Which she did. They were going over and over the star charts and that is when I noticed that Alnilam was missing.
Interviewer: Alnilam? I am not familiar with that name.
Rei: Yeah, it was the center star of the belt, in the constellation of Orion. OMCOM produced some journals, in English, that I was able to read and we were able to use that data to figure out exactly when Alnilam disappeared. OMCOM was able to compute that whatever was causing the stars to disappear was headed straight for Earth and would be there in three years. The Vuduri freaked out.
Interviewer: Freaked out?
Rei: They were upset. But it was right then and there, no matter how things were with Rome at the moment, that I realized I might have some value in this universe. While the Vuduri and the Overmind thought they knew everything, they clearly did not. In fact, I was the one who came up with the idea of simply flying a telescope up, faster than light, turn around and look at the light waves from event. That was why they were there in the first place.
Interviewer: That would seem like common sense.
Rei: Yeah, but that is one thing the Vuduri lack, or lacked. Common sense. They were so used to deferring to the Overmind to do their thinking for them and the Overmind didn’t think of that itself.
Interviewer: The Overmind, as I understand it, is very powerful. Why did it not think of that?
Rei: Because this particular Overmind was only made up of 80 Vuduri and quite frankly, wasn’t all that smart. And it had this plan of dispersing its equipment in a certain pattern and they had prematurely packed up all their equipment. That plan was shot to hell. All it could think about was going home with its tail between its legs.
Interviewer: So when you suggested an alternative, were they receptive?
Rei: It’s funny. I don’t know if the Overmind thought it was a good idea or not. But Ursay didn’t hesitate. I think his human brain, maybe there was a part that was not completely a slave to the Overmind. He immediately ordered a tug to launch with a telescope. It would take an hour or two but at least they’d have some data to work with.
Interviewer: And did they?
Rei: Yeah, eventually. Rome was still icy cold to me and it hurt to be around her. So I went back to my quarters to wait for data to come in from the telescope. I used OMCOM’s resources to learn more about this time period and the Earth. The more I looked, the more depressed I got. All that got interrupted when Rome came to see me.

Tomorrow, part 8