Original fic: Octagon Curve [first draft]
Mar. 18th, 2011 02:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabeth“Alright, kid, I’ve got the go.” Mickey turned back around from the comm panel and grinned.
“For serious? The control room? *Yes!*” Kasim punched the air and did a little dance.
“Kasim, be calm. These people have serious work to do.” Amira pulled him in and smoothed his skullcap straight distractedly.
Kasim put up with his mother’s ministrations for all of four seconds before shrugging away and tugging his cap down himself. Unruly curls escaped again every which way.
Mickey remembered his own attempts to fit an afro in the hood of a pressure suit and grinned. “You are going to need to slow down a bit, or you’ll be bouncing off the walls. And they’re not as comfy as the walls down here. You kick off a display screen and you’ll be wiping them all down for weeks; kick a control board…” Mickey shook his head and did the sucked in breath of ‘that’ll cost you’ common to repair men system wide.
“I’ll be careful. I’ll keep my hands in my pockets.” Kasim promised earnestly.
“Then you’ll kick something for sure.” Mickey saw the blank looks on both mother and son. Stationers, of course. Didn’t know their way around yet. “Burn’s over, and we’re going in the lift.” And still, there was no enlightenment.
“But there’s only one floor. We walked all around it once already. And across the middle, and we looked down the other middle, but we could not go there with all the data crystals, they think we’ll break them or something. As if station doesn’t understand data! I have seen the central library; we had more crystal than this whole ship in just the children’s section. And that was when we saw the control room, but the door was closed then.”
“You went for a walk during burn?” Mickey asked.
“One of the children wished to show us our new home,” Amira said.
“And I bet I know which one… Anders, right? About thirteen, thinks he knows everything?” At their uncertain nod he nodded with a scowl. “We will be having *words*.” He pulled his notepad and scrawled a line.
“Was that not right?” Amira asked.
“The burn alarm, you heard that? They use the same on station for g shift.”
“Yes, but down had settled down when he knocked.” Amira smiled uncertainly.
“Until we were up to speed, yeah. Look, you didn’t know better, that’s on me, I should have made sure. But I thought you’d read the door signs.”
“None of the signs have proper writing here, just this alphabet stuff,” Kasim said.
Amira blushed. “We speak English perhaps better than we read it,” she admitted.
Mickey stepped over to her. “You should have said.” He worked to sound quiet, calm. She still shifted away from him uneasily.
“We did not want to be a bother.” She looked down. “We had heard… everyone said, it was so hard to get off station, to qualify. We didn’t want…”
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s not a problem. I’ll get you some translation cards, maybe change some displays. Don’t worry, half the signs have hanzi already, Arabic will just… round things out.” She looked so relieved Mickey stepped back and rubbed at his neck awkwardly. “It’s not like we could get rid of you now anyway. Two months to port, no stopping.” This did not have the reassuring effect he had hoped for. Even Kasim looked a bit crestfallen. Mickey took a breath and tried again. “Anders… he knows better. It’s this stupid game the youngers have, to run the ring cross while we’re burning. They’ve learned the timing, so they usually get away with it, but if we cut short or had to correct course even once…” He shook his head grimly. “He’ll be scrubbing the burn deck for this.”
“Um… which one’s the burn deck?” Kasim looked worried.
Mickey reckoned he could see the wheels turning, wondering how much half a burn deck would be. He grinned. “The one you hit when we’re burning.” He slapped the wall right behind him, then realised the stationers were standing by the opposite wall and frowned. “Lesson one: learn your falls. On the ring it’s hard to fall far cause we’re curving. But if we burn, right now, you’ve got the whole width of the corridor to fall. Come here.”
He reached a hand out for Kasim, who took it gladly. Mickey pulled it across until their palms were flat to the wall, Kasim’s hand small under his own. The kid’s fingers were the same blunt shape, the palm a pudgy version of his own square. Himself in miniature.
Kasim rubbed his fingers into the amber burn mat. “It’s soft. Like playground tiles.”
Mickey blinked and got back to it. “Same stuff, yeah. You ever fallen onto that?”
“A few times. It’s only fun very low down.”
“And that was at one g. We can do more. A lot more, unloaded. Then from that wall it’s like falling two floors, maybe three. So you bump this wall when you’re walking, okay?”
“Okay,” Kasim agreed, but then he wrinkled his nose up and kicked at the green. “It would be easier if this wasn’t in the way.”
“And then where would we walk, if we’re spinning while we burn?” Mickey saw the puzzled face and grinned, then realised, and the grin fell off. This kid… this kid he was supposed to teach… he’d no idea. He’d lived all his life in one spinning drum, all steady, all secure. And Mickey had absolutely no idea what this kid didn’t know. He’d never asked these questions, he’d just been out there, by his dad, learning the burn and roll and clamped on spin the way this kid learned to walk. What had Amira said? Down? Did they think that was a direction, like in and out?
Amira patted his shoulder and eased past, taking his lessons to heart as quickly as her son was. “You remember, spin and thrust, your physics classes. We tried the simulator and you tried to walk up the walls.”
“Right, so, this is like the spinning drum? So sometimes this is down.” He knelt to pat at it.
Mickey nodded approvingly, kneeling to join him. “You learn that feeling kid, cause the green deck is your best friend when it all goes bonkers.” Puzzled faces, so a quick change of vocabulary. “When g starts shifting, when spin slows or burn kicks and stops, you need to get your bum on the green and hold on.” Mickey demonstrated, and smiled as the kid imitated him immediately. Amira smoothed her clothes and sighed a little first, but she joined them.
Kasim was already feeling around in the slots. “Are these hand holds?”
Mickey nodded. “You get a good grip on the edge and you can usually stay put, but there’s loops every half meter, regular. You get a couple of those around you, it’s as good as seat belts. Velcro fixings, right?” He grinned as Kasim matched nimble hands to what he heard, and had himself belted before his mother even found the straps.
“It’s like long grass,” Amira fussed, brushing it out of the way rather than just plunging her hands into the slots. “I can see growing some garden in your corridors, but not overgrowing them.”
“It’s long enough to get a good grip on, though you shouldn’t need it. It’s better footing than it looks. You can stay up on the green deck even when it’s an eighth away from g.” He looked at Kasim. “Can, I said. Not should. Get one leg wonky, trying it.”
Kasim giggled uncertainly, and Mickey tried to give him a solemn face.
Amira got the belts settled and looked at him with focused concentration. He got the feeling she’d rather be taking notes. A man likes to show off some, but this was not exactly what he’d had in mind when he’d met her. He smiled at her wryly.
Kasim leaned back and pressed into the burn deck, then bumped his head a few times, testing.
“That’s the way you want to be, if you can. But…” Mickey spun around on his butt, legs to the burn and back now on the spin deck, “This is almost as good. If we have to kick the engines, your legs take it, and when we spin up after…” he spread his arms out comfortably past his head and relaxed.
Kasim unbelted and joined him, butt on the spin deck at first, then, frowning, nudging himself up to the green again. Mickey grinned properly and gave him the thumbs up as Kasim reached in for the belts again.
Amira wrinkled her nose. “Really, upside down now? And these gaps between the decks… surely all sorts fall in there.”
Mickey blankly filed the concept ‘upside down’ for later lookup, and addressed her other concern. “They fall in, we don’t slip on them. It works out. We’ve got sixteen kids old enough for scrub work, seventeen now. Reckon we can keep it tidy.”
At mention of scrub Kasim quickly found a new subject. “The floor feels different from the burn deck.”
“Spin deck. What you’re pressed into now, that’s the spin deck. And yeah, it’s got a different problem, so they make it from different stuff. The clue is in the name.”
“Spin? But stations spin, and they have grids or bumps.” Kasim ran a hand over it and looked pensive. Then he tilted his head back to look across the corridor. “It’s something to do with the big ra shapes up the walls, isn’t it? When you drop things they fall ra shaped.”
“R? I’d say J.” Mickey blinked, realised at least one letter name of the Arabic alphabet, and got back on track. “But you’re lined up. Spin presses you out but if you’re not touching it the deck moves under you. I saw one ship once, a tiny thing, but they did it up fancy, like a passenger liner. They put carpet on the spin deck. They took it out sharpish. Rug burn like you wouldn’t believe.”
Amira tutted and stood up, smoothing her clothes down. “Come, Kasim. Don’t get used to it down there.”
“It’s good, here. Not so…” Here the kid trailed off and waved a hand around, first looking for a word, then trying to demonstrate. Little little circles.
“Dizzy?” Mickey nodded. “Spin’s a bit hard straight off, at least three times faster than you’re used to. Smaller ship, can’t be helped. You’ll get used to it. Or if you don’t, you can take the lift in and float.”
“Oh please, no. I have a hard enough time with that when I have to.” Amira was more sincere than he’d yet heard her. He made mental note to refresh the sick bags in her quarters before they next manoeuvred.
“How about you, kid? Float well?”
“It’s awesome! I can walk on the ceiling!”
“Can, yes. Should?”
“Long fall, always long. Shouldn’t go up there. No sir.” Kasim patted the green and nodded wisely… and not a little hopefully.
Mickey grinned. He’d promised control rooms, and here they were still at outmost. He rolled to his feet, Kasim following with alacrity.
“Learn the ceiling too,” Mickey advised, reaching up and stepping over. He slapped the light panel lightly.
Kasim followed but wasn’t half way high enough. He jumped, but he’d not thought first – spin took Mickey straight into him. He was well braced though, no worries.
“Whoa there! Look before you leap, right?”
Mickey set him back on his feet, and Kasim looked at those wall Js again. His finger traced one out, then mirrored it. In-out-back, in-out-back. Then he whapped his own head and threw his hands up, saying something to himself Mickey couldn’t follow. His mother’s reaction to the wording was fairly easy to follow though, and Mickey chuckled.
“Okay, I got it now,” Kasim declared, then scrunched himself up and launched at almost the right angle. Amira darted forward but missed her grab. Mickey, once again, caught an arm full of eight year old.
“Very nearly,” he consoled him. “But leave it for the gym, okay? It’s better padded than me.”
“Yes sir,” Kasim mumbled, and squirmed to get down.
Mickey held him up instead, raised to the lights. “Feel that, while you’re up there.”
Kasim put one hand on the light strip and the other on the red. “Huh. Not good.” He ran his hands along them and pressed in, until Mickey was sure the texture would leave marks.
“Yeah, you get that feel in your head. Those up there, they are not your friends. The lights are exactly where you don’t want to be. They’re ceiling every which way. And red? Red is a liar. You’ll be going along the burn deck, maybe not thinking, maybe keeping to the wall like you would under spin – but then we do spin, and, BAM!” He dropped him, let go his waist and caught him under his arms. He got the squeak he was after, close to proper scared. “So you remember what red feels like, and you stay well clear.”
“But spin takes time, surely? It can’t be that likely…”
Mickey glared at Amira, cut her off right there. “It doesn’t have to be. If we’re tired, if we’re hurt, if we’ve got turned around, we still need to know. Red gets you dead.”
“And purple? That’s the worst fall, you said that already.”
“Yeah, can be.” Mickey shrugged. “Where would you put the cabins? Where you fall in, or out? We voted for a good solid burn deck, and for staying strapped in our beds. They tilt enough to keep us level, it’s all good.”
“The ladders are in the red,” Kasim observed quietly.
“Yeah. They are.”
“We should not have climbed out.”
“No, you should not.” Mickey patted his shoulder solemnly. Then he cuffed his head, just to make sure of the point. He was gentle, but he was the final straw for Kasim’s cap. It fell from his head, his hair once again an unruly riot.
Kasim glared at him through the curls, then rolled his eyes. Amira sighed and bent to pick up the cap, then called Kasim over in their own language and set about setting to rights again, quick and scolding.
Right, then. Perhaps not the emphasis he’d wanted to end on.
He sighed.
“And we must thank Mister Mickey, who has taken up all his time with these basics, when he could have been on the bridge already. I’m sure we have slowed him enough for today. Come, we can go to lunch in our room, and think on this.”
“We’re not going to Control?” Kasim’s face fairly crumpled. His eyes got so big Mickey wondered how they still fit. “But the Captain, she said yes!”
“That she did,” Mickey said quickly. “Think of this as the pre-flight. Quick run through the basics before we get the lift in. That way you’ll be sure to get out feet to the deck.”
Amira rolled her eyes, and Kasim just still looked lost.
“We’re still going,” Mickey clarified.
The kid’s face glowed like star gleam, tentative. “We are?”
“Yep.”
Kasim grinned, and if Mickey hadn’t been in closer to their local star he’d not have a comparison ready: like a sun rising. Mickey felt like he’d docked cleanly on manual. He grinned and stepped over to the lift.
“Kasim… you will be *careful* up there. You will *pay attention*.” Amira tugged straight and tucked in and set Kasim before her, hands on his shoulders. “And you will mind your father.”
Kasim looked at Mickey shyly. Their eyes met and they shared a moment, or possibly a *gulp*, in mutual recognition of the newness of it all.
“I will, mother.” Kasim nodded to her, then turned and stepped across to Mickey, hand raised.
Mickey took it, and led him in.
“For serious? The control room? *Yes!*” Kasim punched the air and did a little dance.
“Kasim, be calm. These people have serious work to do.” Amira pulled him in and smoothed his skullcap straight distractedly.
Kasim put up with his mother’s ministrations for all of four seconds before shrugging away and tugging his cap down himself. Unruly curls escaped again every which way.
Mickey remembered his own attempts to fit an afro in the hood of a pressure suit and grinned. “You are going to need to slow down a bit, or you’ll be bouncing off the walls. And they’re not as comfy as the walls down here. You kick off a display screen and you’ll be wiping them all down for weeks; kick a control board…” Mickey shook his head and did the sucked in breath of ‘that’ll cost you’ common to repair men system wide.
“I’ll be careful. I’ll keep my hands in my pockets.” Kasim promised earnestly.
“Then you’ll kick something for sure.” Mickey saw the blank looks on both mother and son. Stationers, of course. Didn’t know their way around yet. “Burn’s over, and we’re going in the lift.” And still, there was no enlightenment.
“But there’s only one floor. We walked all around it once already. And across the middle, and we looked down the other middle, but we could not go there with all the data crystals, they think we’ll break them or something. As if station doesn’t understand data! I have seen the central library; we had more crystal than this whole ship in just the children’s section. And that was when we saw the control room, but the door was closed then.”
“You went for a walk during burn?” Mickey asked.
“One of the children wished to show us our new home,” Amira said.
“And I bet I know which one… Anders, right? About thirteen, thinks he knows everything?” At their uncertain nod he nodded with a scowl. “We will be having *words*.” He pulled his notepad and scrawled a line.
“Was that not right?” Amira asked.
“The burn alarm, you heard that? They use the same on station for g shift.”
“Yes, but down had settled down when he knocked.” Amira smiled uncertainly.
“Until we were up to speed, yeah. Look, you didn’t know better, that’s on me, I should have made sure. But I thought you’d read the door signs.”
“None of the signs have proper writing here, just this alphabet stuff,” Kasim said.
Amira blushed. “We speak English perhaps better than we read it,” she admitted.
Mickey stepped over to her. “You should have said.” He worked to sound quiet, calm. She still shifted away from him uneasily.
“We did not want to be a bother.” She looked down. “We had heard… everyone said, it was so hard to get off station, to qualify. We didn’t want…”
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s not a problem. I’ll get you some translation cards, maybe change some displays. Don’t worry, half the signs have hanzi already, Arabic will just… round things out.” She looked so relieved Mickey stepped back and rubbed at his neck awkwardly. “It’s not like we could get rid of you now anyway. Two months to port, no stopping.” This did not have the reassuring effect he had hoped for. Even Kasim looked a bit crestfallen. Mickey took a breath and tried again. “Anders… he knows better. It’s this stupid game the youngers have, to run the ring cross while we’re burning. They’ve learned the timing, so they usually get away with it, but if we cut short or had to correct course even once…” He shook his head grimly. “He’ll be scrubbing the burn deck for this.”
“Um… which one’s the burn deck?” Kasim looked worried.
Mickey reckoned he could see the wheels turning, wondering how much half a burn deck would be. He grinned. “The one you hit when we’re burning.” He slapped the wall right behind him, then realised the stationers were standing by the opposite wall and frowned. “Lesson one: learn your falls. On the ring it’s hard to fall far cause we’re curving. But if we burn, right now, you’ve got the whole width of the corridor to fall. Come here.”
He reached a hand out for Kasim, who took it gladly. Mickey pulled it across until their palms were flat to the wall, Kasim’s hand small under his own. The kid’s fingers were the same blunt shape, the palm a pudgy version of his own square. Himself in miniature.
Kasim rubbed his fingers into the amber burn mat. “It’s soft. Like playground tiles.”
Mickey blinked and got back to it. “Same stuff, yeah. You ever fallen onto that?”
“A few times. It’s only fun very low down.”
“And that was at one g. We can do more. A lot more, unloaded. Then from that wall it’s like falling two floors, maybe three. So you bump this wall when you’re walking, okay?”
“Okay,” Kasim agreed, but then he wrinkled his nose up and kicked at the green. “It would be easier if this wasn’t in the way.”
“And then where would we walk, if we’re spinning while we burn?” Mickey saw the puzzled face and grinned, then realised, and the grin fell off. This kid… this kid he was supposed to teach… he’d no idea. He’d lived all his life in one spinning drum, all steady, all secure. And Mickey had absolutely no idea what this kid didn’t know. He’d never asked these questions, he’d just been out there, by his dad, learning the burn and roll and clamped on spin the way this kid learned to walk. What had Amira said? Down? Did they think that was a direction, like in and out?
Amira patted his shoulder and eased past, taking his lessons to heart as quickly as her son was. “You remember, spin and thrust, your physics classes. We tried the simulator and you tried to walk up the walls.”
“Right, so, this is like the spinning drum? So sometimes this is down.” He knelt to pat at it.
Mickey nodded approvingly, kneeling to join him. “You learn that feeling kid, cause the green deck is your best friend when it all goes bonkers.” Puzzled faces, so a quick change of vocabulary. “When g starts shifting, when spin slows or burn kicks and stops, you need to get your bum on the green and hold on.” Mickey demonstrated, and smiled as the kid imitated him immediately. Amira smoothed her clothes and sighed a little first, but she joined them.
Kasim was already feeling around in the slots. “Are these hand holds?”
Mickey nodded. “You get a good grip on the edge and you can usually stay put, but there’s loops every half meter, regular. You get a couple of those around you, it’s as good as seat belts. Velcro fixings, right?” He grinned as Kasim matched nimble hands to what he heard, and had himself belted before his mother even found the straps.
“It’s like long grass,” Amira fussed, brushing it out of the way rather than just plunging her hands into the slots. “I can see growing some garden in your corridors, but not overgrowing them.”
“It’s long enough to get a good grip on, though you shouldn’t need it. It’s better footing than it looks. You can stay up on the green deck even when it’s an eighth away from g.” He looked at Kasim. “Can, I said. Not should. Get one leg wonky, trying it.”
Kasim giggled uncertainly, and Mickey tried to give him a solemn face.
Amira got the belts settled and looked at him with focused concentration. He got the feeling she’d rather be taking notes. A man likes to show off some, but this was not exactly what he’d had in mind when he’d met her. He smiled at her wryly.
Kasim leaned back and pressed into the burn deck, then bumped his head a few times, testing.
“That’s the way you want to be, if you can. But…” Mickey spun around on his butt, legs to the burn and back now on the spin deck, “This is almost as good. If we have to kick the engines, your legs take it, and when we spin up after…” he spread his arms out comfortably past his head and relaxed.
Kasim unbelted and joined him, butt on the spin deck at first, then, frowning, nudging himself up to the green again. Mickey grinned properly and gave him the thumbs up as Kasim reached in for the belts again.
Amira wrinkled her nose. “Really, upside down now? And these gaps between the decks… surely all sorts fall in there.”
Mickey blankly filed the concept ‘upside down’ for later lookup, and addressed her other concern. “They fall in, we don’t slip on them. It works out. We’ve got sixteen kids old enough for scrub work, seventeen now. Reckon we can keep it tidy.”
At mention of scrub Kasim quickly found a new subject. “The floor feels different from the burn deck.”
“Spin deck. What you’re pressed into now, that’s the spin deck. And yeah, it’s got a different problem, so they make it from different stuff. The clue is in the name.”
“Spin? But stations spin, and they have grids or bumps.” Kasim ran a hand over it and looked pensive. Then he tilted his head back to look across the corridor. “It’s something to do with the big ra shapes up the walls, isn’t it? When you drop things they fall ra shaped.”
“R? I’d say J.” Mickey blinked, realised at least one letter name of the Arabic alphabet, and got back on track. “But you’re lined up. Spin presses you out but if you’re not touching it the deck moves under you. I saw one ship once, a tiny thing, but they did it up fancy, like a passenger liner. They put carpet on the spin deck. They took it out sharpish. Rug burn like you wouldn’t believe.”
Amira tutted and stood up, smoothing her clothes down. “Come, Kasim. Don’t get used to it down there.”
“It’s good, here. Not so…” Here the kid trailed off and waved a hand around, first looking for a word, then trying to demonstrate. Little little circles.
“Dizzy?” Mickey nodded. “Spin’s a bit hard straight off, at least three times faster than you’re used to. Smaller ship, can’t be helped. You’ll get used to it. Or if you don’t, you can take the lift in and float.”
“Oh please, no. I have a hard enough time with that when I have to.” Amira was more sincere than he’d yet heard her. He made mental note to refresh the sick bags in her quarters before they next manoeuvred.
“How about you, kid? Float well?”
“It’s awesome! I can walk on the ceiling!”
“Can, yes. Should?”
“Long fall, always long. Shouldn’t go up there. No sir.” Kasim patted the green and nodded wisely… and not a little hopefully.
Mickey grinned. He’d promised control rooms, and here they were still at outmost. He rolled to his feet, Kasim following with alacrity.
“Learn the ceiling too,” Mickey advised, reaching up and stepping over. He slapped the light panel lightly.
Kasim followed but wasn’t half way high enough. He jumped, but he’d not thought first – spin took Mickey straight into him. He was well braced though, no worries.
“Whoa there! Look before you leap, right?”
Mickey set him back on his feet, and Kasim looked at those wall Js again. His finger traced one out, then mirrored it. In-out-back, in-out-back. Then he whapped his own head and threw his hands up, saying something to himself Mickey couldn’t follow. His mother’s reaction to the wording was fairly easy to follow though, and Mickey chuckled.
“Okay, I got it now,” Kasim declared, then scrunched himself up and launched at almost the right angle. Amira darted forward but missed her grab. Mickey, once again, caught an arm full of eight year old.
“Very nearly,” he consoled him. “But leave it for the gym, okay? It’s better padded than me.”
“Yes sir,” Kasim mumbled, and squirmed to get down.
Mickey held him up instead, raised to the lights. “Feel that, while you’re up there.”
Kasim put one hand on the light strip and the other on the red. “Huh. Not good.” He ran his hands along them and pressed in, until Mickey was sure the texture would leave marks.
“Yeah, you get that feel in your head. Those up there, they are not your friends. The lights are exactly where you don’t want to be. They’re ceiling every which way. And red? Red is a liar. You’ll be going along the burn deck, maybe not thinking, maybe keeping to the wall like you would under spin – but then we do spin, and, BAM!” He dropped him, let go his waist and caught him under his arms. He got the squeak he was after, close to proper scared. “So you remember what red feels like, and you stay well clear.”
“But spin takes time, surely? It can’t be that likely…”
Mickey glared at Amira, cut her off right there. “It doesn’t have to be. If we’re tired, if we’re hurt, if we’ve got turned around, we still need to know. Red gets you dead.”
“And purple? That’s the worst fall, you said that already.”
“Yeah, can be.” Mickey shrugged. “Where would you put the cabins? Where you fall in, or out? We voted for a good solid burn deck, and for staying strapped in our beds. They tilt enough to keep us level, it’s all good.”
“The ladders are in the red,” Kasim observed quietly.
“Yeah. They are.”
“We should not have climbed out.”
“No, you should not.” Mickey patted his shoulder solemnly. Then he cuffed his head, just to make sure of the point. He was gentle, but he was the final straw for Kasim’s cap. It fell from his head, his hair once again an unruly riot.
Kasim glared at him through the curls, then rolled his eyes. Amira sighed and bent to pick up the cap, then called Kasim over in their own language and set about setting to rights again, quick and scolding.
Right, then. Perhaps not the emphasis he’d wanted to end on.
He sighed.
“And we must thank Mister Mickey, who has taken up all his time with these basics, when he could have been on the bridge already. I’m sure we have slowed him enough for today. Come, we can go to lunch in our room, and think on this.”
“We’re not going to Control?” Kasim’s face fairly crumpled. His eyes got so big Mickey wondered how they still fit. “But the Captain, she said yes!”
“That she did,” Mickey said quickly. “Think of this as the pre-flight. Quick run through the basics before we get the lift in. That way you’ll be sure to get out feet to the deck.”
Amira rolled her eyes, and Kasim just still looked lost.
“We’re still going,” Mickey clarified.
The kid’s face glowed like star gleam, tentative. “We are?”
“Yep.”
Kasim grinned, and if Mickey hadn’t been in closer to their local star he’d not have a comparison ready: like a sun rising. Mickey felt like he’d docked cleanly on manual. He grinned and stepped over to the lift.
“Kasim… you will be *careful* up there. You will *pay attention*.” Amira tugged straight and tucked in and set Kasim before her, hands on his shoulders. “And you will mind your father.”
Kasim looked at Mickey shyly. Their eyes met and they shared a moment, or possibly a *gulp*, in mutual recognition of the newness of it all.
“I will, mother.” Kasim nodded to her, then turned and stepped across to Mickey, hand raised.
Mickey took it, and led him in.
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Date: 2011-03-18 02:18 am (UTC)All the research I did on spaceship design turned into this in my head. The J shapes on the walls are a mixture of diagrams and suggested architecture, because having a visual reminder of which way you're spinning would be helpful.
Color coded walls, octagonal corridors (is it obvious they're octagonal? I only put it in the title. Maybe I should add a bit?), and the textures of various surfaces is my attempt at hard coding information into the environment, and dealing with the possibility of shifts in gravity, as spin and thrust vary. There's always somewhere to walk, and even if you can't see it's obvious which wall is the wrong wall. That bit in one of the Vorkosigan books where Cordelia wedges herself into the wrong corner of the cell struck me as bad ship design.
Even if I had visuals to work with I'd still need to explain the logic of it, or else they'd all be working in a rainbow tube for no readily apparent reason.
They have grass for no readily apparent reason. I was looking at a link to office designs where they had the weirdest ways of making flowers grow out of the walls. If people want that for their office, they maybe want that for their floating world.
If any of the design logic fails to convince, or if I got physics horribly wrong, I really want to know.
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Date: 2011-03-18 02:23 am (UTC)English as a second language has tells, but I suspect I'm getting them very wrong. Hrm.
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Date: 2011-03-18 04:02 am (UTC)And I loved the arbitrary grass wall with seatbelts and handholds. (now I kind of want one of those)
Just some initial thoughts that came to mind while reading. I really enjoy seeing these bits and pieces of your work, and hope you will share more!
~ c.
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Date: 2011-03-18 02:16 pm (UTC)Mickey is the kid's father, but he's only just met him. 'mind your father' was meant to clarify the relationship. I guess it really doesn't.
... yeah, awkward sun rise is awkward. okay.
I'm glad the docking and upside down bits worked.
thanks for the thoughts :-)
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Date: 2011-03-21 06:53 pm (UTC)