The crew are all strapped in, and have been for five minutes. No passengers this run, but I still make a habitual sweep through the lounge and the living quarters.
"Emergence in 10 seconds"
If I still had a body, it would be shifting slightly in its seat, left hand on a throttle, right hand wrapped round a control stick, and my eyes scanning displays showing the distance and heading to the gate.
Of course, I haven't had a body in a long time, and it's been thousands of years since a basic human has piloted a ship, but what can I say? I'm a fan of old movies.
"Emergence in 5 seconds"
The AI makes the announcement using it's professionally calm, "nothing to worry about" voice. The transition from gate space to normal space is routine, but accidents can happen.
"4"
I ramp up, and watch the inside of the ship a moment longer. Then, I switch to outside.
This is me. This is where I really live. Oh, crew's are nice enough, and I haven't liked the trips when I've been without them, but they don't understand what it's like for me to be me.
"3"
Gatespace looks much like realspace, if you could see all of real space from a long, long way away. It's like a galactic core, with stars almost close enough to touch, but still separate, and slightly dim. If we were closer to the edge of the galaxy, we'd be able to see across to our neighbors, almost close enough to lean over the fence to chat.
"2"
Back to business. Running at ramp speed I've got plenty of time, but still, I've got plenty to do. I ask the shields to bring themselves up to full please (they're dumb, but politeness doesn't cost much), and check that the realspace engines have finished their startup sequence.
"1"
This close to the gateway we're not moving very quickly. The ship drifts towards the interface, holding steady in x and y, moving forwards towards z.
"Ze-"
The AI insists that the transitions into and out of gatespace are instantaneous. Anything organic that has expressed an opinion is clear that the transfer takes time. For me, with feet in both camps, there is an endless instant of confusion, and then the ship, the crew, the AI, me, we're all back in real space.
"-ro"
Back in realspace. I tell the forward scanner to send out ping, and wait a millisecond for a response. Nothing, so we're clear to boost out of here. I send the standard instruction to the engines to negotiate with the onboard gravity to manage the boost within reasonable human tolerance, and queue up a "transition complete" message on the ship's intercom.
Rule #1 clear the gate. You never know what's coming though afterwards.
Still nothing from the active scan, so I can relax a little. The spectrum of the local star looks about right, and I'm getting the expected chirps from the usual pulsars so we're in the right system. It's been a long time since a ship went through the wrong gate, but it's worth checking.
The engines and the gravity generators both ping me copies of their agreements, and my inner ears (well, the signal translators that connect to what used to be my inner ears, but that's so much less snappy to say) report both the perceived acceleration (not much more than 2g) and the real acceleration (substantially more. I guess the grav generators have been upgrading themselves again. I make a note to have a chat with them later, after I've checked the accounts to see what they've bought and how much it cost).
Half a second clear of the gate and we're looking good. I start bringing the ship round to point at our destination, and begin ramping down to something closer to human basic speed.
"Emergence complete, no problems reported"