Title Page and Frontispiece

wrinkled // RÛMPLED

Chapter One

Thread 1: Skien

1 :: Evil Incarnate

Money is a distraction; wealth is a form of misdirection — the con artist's tool of choice.

In one of the high blisters that characterise the tall buildings of Novii Arabat is a large, mostly wooden desk. To one side a curved glass screen hangsI don't see any reason for this to be some fancy floating screen. It's just a curved monitor held off the edge of the desk so that the whole deskspace can be utilised more efficiently. I also don't see any reason for this to be an Avatar-style transparent glass deal. Privacy is rather important to such individuals as R. S. Skien.

in the air just off the edge of the desk while on the other lays a small stack of paperscreens in red manilla folders. On the top of the pile a paperscreen is active, scrolling quickly through a news article from yesterday. A head rotates in the air beside it.I'm tempted to say that this, too, is no holographic trick, but instead an anolog head, hanging from a thread. This is not all that unlikely, but I don't feel it to be true.

B - yeah, it's not an actual head. That would be a big issue for a guy who is supposed to be a gov't functionary. (I realise that requires some assumptions for culture, which we're going to go ahead and make for an instant; including the assumption that having the heads of your enemies is a not a practice well attested to in the presently discussed culture.)

The one wall that does not look out to the surrounding cloud banks and similar skyscrapers is undecorated save for a single tableau hung over a chaise in the centre of the wall. The two doors on either side of the massive pièce d'art stand like blank-faced sentries, one of which has just slid open.

…is wanted in fully half of civilised regions with stable governments; this fact notwithstanding, his organisations own, in one way or another, most of those without. He has influential minority shares in BioARC, Tameron and Lanri Enterprises,J - I strongly believe this sentence needs modified, though only by a small amount. The situations dealt with by the claused [sic] before and after the comma are not connected propermy, implying a different conjunction should be used or the concepts themselves should be adjusted.

through various holding companies. But his majority holdings in top industries have recently been earning him a lot of interest,J - Another comma issue, this time entirely ungrammatical.

and the attention of the Constellation's financial crimes taskforce. His own contributions to the International Criminal Courts notwithstanding,J - This comma may be grammatically correct, but I feel that it breaks the flow. I also can't think of a sinvle [sic] other instance of it happening in this specific context, especially in other fiction.

he has been under review for tax evasion and usury fraud for the past three years after a series of complaints by a coalition of smaller Western pre-member states. The resulting investigation is ongoing and no information is publicly available excepting the enumerated list of companies and individuals to be counted among the prosecution, a list that numbering in the hundreds.

In recent years, he has been officially banned from the three @vague-system1 nations following the <$YEAR -8> @live-ronim acquisitions@live-ronim is a political problem waiting to happen. The company acquisition of resource-rich colonies is going to be a problem soon. What does this mean? Acquisition of a colony.. Is this like buying debt? If funding colonies is rather like lending money, then it makes sense that that debt might get handed over to collections. The amount of money involved at this level is unthinkable. This is a kind of poker where skill and patience are as important as manœuvering and cunning.

. Although they have not revoked their contracts with his companies — ostensibly on the grounds that they cannot J - …do so… ; Because Rnglish isn't Eussion [sic]

due to budgetary concerns — they have[…]

— Jormel Andersen, United Systems Press/AP Copyright © <$YEAR> All rights reserved.Jormel Anderson is a Constellation-approved journalist with United Systems press, one of several press corps that cover national, international, constellation and intersystem news. There are a limited number of badged journalists with direct access to Constellation Congressmembers and their staff, of which Anderson is USP's only. They have security clearance (should look up a modern analogue) which permits them to attend those meetings of congress involving levels of secrecy, and are given significant leeway as to how, when and what to report on these. They work closely with the Congress, but are not subordinate to them and are not a propaganda corps. The prestige of the badge is respected and known in most systems. There is no accolade greater in journalism than to be awarded the badge. The selection process is particular, and prefers fact-based investigative reporting and informed, balanced editorial work to sensation and careerism. Sensationalism isn't dead, but on a multiplanetary scale it doesn't work quite as well. Or better said, it happens a bit slower. Every group is pretty well isolated from one another ; each planet has it's own issues and culture. It might be interesting to watch a trend move across the systems, in a sort of ripple. Where the cultural centre of the wrinkle is located is an important question. If no edgestation is more important than any other… where does the Congress convene ? I'm still undecided as to how the constellation works.

This same police report/news article is the one that will be sitting on Sergeant Norðdahlson's desk soon.

Looking at his face on the curved screen, its subject sits with furrowed brow and pursed lips. His nearsuede suit looks black in the filtered green light of the tinted room and his almost oily leather shoes squeak a little on the glass floor.I would somehow make it clear somehow that he's shifted his attention to the paperscreen, either by stating that here or by adding it in around the time “its subject” is mentioned after the text quote. Otherwise the clarity of the sentence immediately after the quote should be improved.

The wrinkled forehead and eyes speaks to a merry face under light salt and pepper hair; but under his bushy eyebrows, lie cold eyes. For a moment a fire burns in those eyes, but then they are quiet again — an ashen grey. His nose is nearly hooked and the cheeks are a sharpJ - Weapon of Choice - Fatboy Slim

sort of full as well, which combined with the the short, uncleftflat?

chin makes him seem top heavy.It would not be disingenuous to think of Mr Gold here, for though I didn't think much of him as informing the physical appearance of my Skien there's no escaping the fact that his manner and physicality are present in him. I haven't seen or thought of Once Upon a Time in a long while, but man is he's the foundation and background for my conception of the creature. (To be clear I haven't seen much of the show in several years and I've done no analysis of him, so it's a very loose resemblance but a sure connection.)

B - Actually, I think it would be disengenuous to think of Mr. Gold. I think I need to go in a different direction with Skien.

He casts a wandering eye over the article again. A minor robber baron who tried to turn his wealth into a political position is about to go down.

Grandiose, almost larger than life is this elusive shadow of a manSo, what if we took our Rumple and made him a shadow? The elusive, impressive and fabulously wealthy spinner of webs and manipulator of threads. Rather than such a man actually existing, let him be the creation of a slier still creature whose true pleasure is in knowing things that others want to hide, in hiding things that others want to know, and in having power over them. His own life might seem an incredibly boring or incredibly magical one to those uninitiated to his point of view. But it matters little, what such pawns might roll around in their heads and call thoughts. They are of no consequence.

, running a business with quarterly earnings higher than the current top three ConstellationThis is rather an important one, so it needs to be referenced a couple times. The idea is a reïteration of one that I've had before, but it's a great deal more interesting as I've just imagined it.

Edgestations are part of a physical network called the Constellation, which is essentially a Dyson sphere, whose purpose is multiple. Without getting into the how, there is a point-mass at the centre of a sparse sphere of interconnected pylons. In a shape rather a lot like a buckyball or an atom, the hyperdense nucleus warps spacetime as does any high-mass object, which has the effect of gravitational attraction. The several rings of pylons, have several purposes, not least of which is to contain the point-mass but also to permit highspeed, near inertially-negligable, travel between star systems. Rather like performing a gravitational assist, an object can gain or lose Δv while performing highly elliptical nearby. The interesting benefit to the nearly empty shell and point-mass construction is that the amount of Δv to be gained from such a manœuvre is directly(exponentially?) proportional to the distance from the centre of the mass orbited. Theoretically, if a vehicle could thrust while occupying the point-masses exact location, my hypothesis is that the Δv gains would be exponential. Supposing that the edgestation provides a helping hand by attaching each vehicle to an assisting mass — against which to thrust — and then dropping both of them down the gravity well, quite nearly against the event horizon the smaller thrusting body would rob the assisting mass of some of its velocity and benefit from the increased Δv of an Oberth manœuvre performed near the event horizon and that stolen from the assisting mass. Asuming the event horizon's radius is greater than the radius of the point-mass, the assisting mass would fall across the event horizon and its velocity would be transferred to the vehicle.

Even if one was anything like capable of accelerating to some percentage of the speed of light with this method, the ability to stop would be infinitely hard, or at least, exponentially hard. In any case, the idea would be that as each edgestation is created, it is connected to the grid, or Constellation, and two-way near instantaneous travel would be possibly between any two nodes of the Constellation (usually an edgestation).

Index-traded companies. The journalist has done good work. Credit is due for that at least. This might have worried its subject, if any of it was remotely true. Andersen's flowery language aside, the fruits of the investigation seem to be that if such person so magnificently powerful even exists his holdings are diversified legitimate businesses, about half of which are publicly traded.

Robert Stewart Skien closes the dossier and looks up at the secretary who has just walked in with a coffee. Setting the tea service on the table she waits for his approval. Flashing her a quick smile, he sets down the paperscreen and allows it to lay flat and go dormant. Taking two sugar cubesThe sugar cubes contain antidotes to a wide variety of poisons known to be in the coffee, some at his order, some not. It is well known in the office that one does not drink his coffee. If fact, it's better if you stay away from the coffee machine entirely. It's been known to shock people who don't know how to handle it. And once it threatened a woman who'd mistaken the espresso button for a timer.

from the silver pot on the tea tray, he helps himself to one of his few delights in this world. Skien does not love many things — and coffee is not even near the top of that carefully curated list — but a good cup of coffee is wonderful for bringing up the spirits, and it has become his habit to take coffee when in the office.

‘Two dozen roses, please, Jennifer.’

‘Red or white, M. Skien ?’

‘White.’

‘On the way, sir.’

Looking over the two other notifications on the docket on his desk, he sends an order to have a supplementary shipment of grain staples and vitamin supplements to Damer delayed by two days. Three shiploads of fresh and dried fruits will be arriving tomorrow, and Skien has a future holiday with Damer food management.

Skien's particular brand of magic is a useful one. He makes possible the impossible — and he has a knack for disappearing things: A detective inspector making inquiries on Malkesh station turns himself into a pretzel after assaulting cargo lift three; A large sum of money disappears from the secured accounts of two small pirate bands in the CerecCeres? No, I think not. This is the CerecAR — the Cerec Administrative Region — a loose correlation of political entities in three wrinkles with populated planets and relatively little to trade. Cerec planets are known for being somewhat idealistic, though most polities in the Cerec region have been successful over the past 500 years. Most interplanetary trade is cultural, and rarely extends beyond the CerecAR.

administrative regionTwo of the smaller pirate bands in the Cerec region.

; A strikingly similar sum found itself in the retirement account of the Secretary to the CFO of BioARC.

In another such act of prestidigitation he sends the order that will result in two crates of fruit being added to a wasteful high-Δv diplomatic shipment. Then he cracks his knuckles and stands up, putting on the jacket that's been laid on his lap for the past three hours.@Skien is not the kind of guy to get stuck doing all the paperwork. He does his work the best in person or on a phone. He's good at giving advice and better at taking it.

B - I've changed my mind. I think he more than relishes paperwork. He's the kind that will not only read the entire 200 page bill, but will then write the summary that the politicians' aides read. He always seems to work harder than the rest, and never to quite be able to enjoy the position he has. This is only partially true. He enjoys his position very much. He is consistently and unfailingly underestimated. It doesn't take much to get to his position, but it takes a lot to keep it.

Therefore, Robert Skien is either a minor elected official, or better yet a semi-important unelected functionary with a seemingly unbiased set of beliefs and unimpeachable character. He's not perfect, because someone might suspect someone that seemed too perfect. He has his flaws. He is sometimes seen being driven to one of the many hidey-holes that functionaries of his kind enjoy spending their off-work hours in. Sometimes he is gone for days at a time. Once or twice he's been known to disappear for a week or two at a time, only to return with a mixed look of invigoration and stupour, as though his time had been spent in the most hagardly refreshing of ways.

There is small alcove behind one of the moving bookshelves that covers a much smaller set of one way windows. This room is furnished with a small toilet: shower, sink, and a sleeping capsule. On a regular business day that's where he'd spend his few hours of sleep.

But today is a holiday.

Roses in hand, @Skien makes his way to the taxi that waits down the hall.

There is not attendant, so it is the cabbie who stands in the light rain to open the car door for his fare.

‘Where to?’

‘Barthen Hall.’

2 :: Visits a wake

Blood is thicker than water.I want these roses to be white when they are received, but turn pink (with red streaks?) later on. Blood in the nutrient mix/water will be pulled up and change the colour of the leaves (I need to make sure this is possible with roses, btw) providing (hopefully) a seriously creepy additional detail to what @Skien's about to do.

Twenty minutes later the taxi comes to a jerking stop in front of a small square shop, crowded on all sides by other, slightly taller, square and rectangle shops. A bowler hat slides off the bench seat and onto the floor coming to rest at @Skien's feet. Stepping out of the taxi he takes a deep breath of the street-side air before turning and bending down to retrieve it from the floorboards. Slinging the bundles of roses over his shoulder like a rucksack, he fingers his shoulder and neck as though trying to massage a tight knot out of the tensed muscle.

The shop door slides open as he approaches ; the words Séance and Cerceuil separate skittishly and hide themselves into the waiting slots on either side of the doorway. @Skien ignores the vibration at his wrist of an incoming call as he steps into the fluorescent shop. The harsh, angular glow of neon lights through steam and condensation on the windows and door give a disgusting, run down feel to an otherwise inconspicuous funeral home conveniently neighbour to two florists and a catering business — floor 3, according to the notice posted low on the wall behind a welcome desk.

A small group has gathered around the body. A few relatives, those on-planet at the time of death, stand in a half circle in one side of the small room, arguing no doubt, quietly about the interment and ceremony. Only one person in the room could afford a full burial anyway, and it wasn't any of those discussing it. An elderly man standing thoughtfully to the side remarks on Skien's entrance and the chatter holds its breath for a moment as everyone glances sidelong at the rather remarkable character who, for the moment, does nothing in reply.

A roundish man in a coat that doesn't button doesn't stop talking even as he loses his train of thought. Another of the group, a woman who looks to be the sister or the wife of the round one, finds it again after a moment and the conversation continues its hushed tones.

Nobody notices anymore as @Skien glances around the room, taking in the scene. Perhaps they each thought the others were paying attention. Had the semicircle of almost pathetic once-family members taken but a moment longer, they might have seen him undo the clasp of his overcoat and then walk coolly toward the casket, stopping a metre away and peering in at the body. But nobody notices as Skein places the roses in the hands of the dead man and then steps back to peer down at the face of this client.

The mortician has done a good job of masking the smell of the body, a job made easier by packing is orifices with synþfloss before applying the funeral makeup.Somewhere in the above Skien needs to say something, in fact he might just need to interrupt the group once the roses are in place, so as to distract them and because he can't help it. He's got a personality and a complex, but it's possible that it is tripped only by certain people. Which is to suggest that once someone has got his interest, it's like fate, he's gotta make a deal with them, no matter how small. I'd say he makes a bet with one of the morticians.

B - It's this last line that I like the most, and the one that fits the far more subdued personality that @Skien has in his current persona

It seems to @Skien an impressive feat, given the stench of this man in life. A shame, too, that he had slipped so far from his once-illustrious career after the birth of his darling child.

A pity it was, too, that his funerailles should be so poorly attended. @Skien twists his wrist to touch his gloved fingers together, calling up the embedded-HUD in his left lens. Snick. The glass of the main entrance with words Cerceuil and Séance splits once again, just as skittishly as before, and @Skien cancels the action lowering his arm and extending his fingers all together. A young woman and much younger boy stride into the space, not quite proudly. The boy is probably eight or nine, but he could be younger. The woman could be twenty-eight but she looks older, and she looks tired. The circle of interested parties pretends she hasn't come, and she ignores them equally roundly. The boy's sheepish look is quite strange on his proud cheeks and square forehead, but the sense of duty seems to fit him perfectly.

The woman walks over to an attendant who has appeared from behind a curtain, leaving the boy in the centre of the room.

‘So how did you know the, um, deceased?’

Skien bends his knees to bring his face to level with the boys navy-blue jacket, just too big for his young shoulders. The boy seemed to think on it hard for a moment, long enough that Skien began to think he might not quite know what the word “deceased” meant.

‘He's my da.’

Skien indicates the cardboard casket and watches as the boy stepped up to look inside.

‘This one?’

He was my da.’

Without looking at him, Skien gives the boy a wide almost sympathetic smile; then he turns away abruptly just before the boys mother walks back out from behind the curtain. A priest knocks on the glass doors of the shop before being quickly ushered in by the attendant, who hands the collared praying-mantis of a human being an #energy-drink-brand-yech.

‘Hullo, what are you doing back here?’

‘@Morgue-attendant,—’

‘Gor, sorry, good to see you back M Tracassin. I didn't recognise you with the hat.’

@Morgue-attendant

‘The service was—’, says Skien his voice is dull as the service itself had been, ‘—nice.’

The sounds of the last of the deceased former relations bickering was interrupted by the snick of the sliding doors opening and then closing again.

‘They're a talkative lot’, the attendant remarks without looking up from his task.

‘Yes, it was amusing to watch the friar try to get a word in edgewise.’

The dead silence that the departed living left in their wake was soon interrupted by the lighting of the crematorium flame and the rolling of the remaining dead into the light of the furnace.

‘Do you think they've had any premonitions? Given at least one of them's gonna join their brother here in the next few days, an' all, I mean.’

Skien seems to chuckle at the thought, or maybe he has thought of something else that amused him. It matters little.

‘I shouldn't think it. Have you?’

‘Hehe, have I what?‘

‘Had any premonitions?’

‘Well, naow, but then I know I'mma get done in. They're not supposed to know.’

@Skien was beginning to like @Morgue-attendant.

Loyalty always comes at a price. Time had taught him that much.

Thread 2: Pîlot: old

Pilot is old.DEFINITION NOT FOUND.

The @Constellation is probably one of the more lively ports serving the outer systems. It'd be another jump or two for most of the hundreds of families (mostly administrators and a few elected officials making their ways back from the @regional-congressHere, ‘region’ refers to a part of the galactic arm roughly 700 lightyears³ (it is quite a lot thinner a slice than it would seem from this estimate). Yeah, intersystem politics is basically exile. But it's also a uniquely important position. Somewhere between death sentence and dream vacation, getting into politics can be a wonderful experience. It comes at a cost though. In order to prevent would-be planet hoppers (individuals who would otherwise use political involvement as an excuse for a free ride off-planet and a sayonara package to a new life), there are checks built-in to most wrinkles' governments.

) waiting for the next part of their journey to start. Many of them have been here for nearly three months, waiting for the transport to arrive. Few have the means to leave any earlier or later than scheduled, and the transfer orbits for the (cheaper) cargo haulers are few and far between.

A low-bubbling squelching sound in his abdomen abruptly alerts @pîlot to his hunger. Ahh, food, let's eat something solid and salty for once. (Trying to find a new metaphor or neologism for “opening” and “navigating” an Internet space, in this case based on WeChat, is difficult.) Speaking a request and posting it to one of the restaurants in the edgestation mess, @pilot pulls trainers on over dark socks and begins to make his way to the mess.If this happens in the Hex/7abring, then the mess is now a large foodcourt and weekday market (serving both work schedules) between the original colony's habitation spaces and the workshops. From the mess nearly anything can be reached by a straight road except the agricultural areas to the #north (right-hand rule, maps are oriented with South up by convention, but this honestly has nothing to do with my Galls-Peters activism, it just turned out this way when I made the maps before realising which direction the sun sets… or maybe I just made another mistake regarding the same thing.) Peu importe : this could just as easily be happening in an edgestation which being kilometres long has a commercial density similar to Caen. In fact any given level has a similar density (population, commercial, recreation, &c.) to Caen. It is definitely not zoned like most American cities. There's no reason to have a massive migration of people from a population area to a work area, (this may help deal with the weight distribution problem if there is spinning happening) when networking and remote communication can be used effortlessly for teamwork and administration. This also introduces massive redundancies that may help stabilise certain resource flow patterns while allowing for individual variations that may alleviate stress and monotony for those living aboard. In fact, where as some stations may include recreational areas and tourist traps, one of the more lucrative options is for high frequency trading. Edgestations are sometimes several light-hours from their anchored solar systems and as in any trading system speed matters. Other tenants of edgestations include planetary, solar and #patch(placeholder referring to a region accessible by one edgestation, which may include several star systems or other habited regions (space flotilla anyone? Tali Zorah Van'Wrinkle?)) government and administration. Governors may stay on planet, but representatives and senate members must spend some time in offices on an edgestation.

B - this does not happen in the Hex/7abring. This is definitely happening on what is either a massive spaceport or one of the edgestations. There is a gravity which approximates 1g/Δv due to the constellation's central mass.

Concept : edgestations, though separated in real space are in fact a single constellation in hyperspace, at least as far as information is concerned. This is to suggest that effectively the edgestations are to the office of the Executor of Rumple's multisystem Alliance of Free Systems and Prefectures as the Senate chamber pods are to the Chancellor's podium. This may be something of a funny picture, but the idea is that each pod/edgestation carries the senators representing one system/planet (or more realistically faction with any intrasystem influence or importance)/governing body (this might allow certain corporations to operate as countries) and is in equal standing (equally indistinct from the others and equally unremarkable among the potentially dozens, scores or grosses that exist) with each of the others. The analogy is also present in the placement of philosophical direction in the hands of a few, a single Executor and their bureaucracy. Whether this is a lasting form of government or not I should like to think on for a while. At least at present such a body would have to operate a priori at distance from the planets represented. The distance of each edgestation from the nearest habited region may be several light-hours, hardly amenable to lively discussion, though it should be mentioned that my conversations with Billy and Ana regularly have similar delays, and often much longer ones as is also the case with Nina sometimes. Mars comms is an eight to forty minute delay, planetary position-depending. That's about the limit of effective high speed communication. There's no point in video or audio comms at that kind of delay, whereas audio and written messages may be sent with no problem.

Okay, so the above concept took edgestations as parts of one shape in hyperspace, allowing realspace travel between them as though skipping the space between. But I think it better that they be like anchors or the arrestor assembly of an aircraft carrier. I fail to see how such a system could dispense with the massive amounts of energy without destabilising its position, which puts a damper on the idea.

Basically it'd be a lot like a carrier. They can be used to slingshot? or propel?… I'm not sure that I like this direction.. I'd prefer it be like an amplifier for something the vessel can already do on it's own, ie, supraluminal travel. Light really gets in the way here but I'm going to try to make sense of this. Maybe I'm just going to have to go with something like a wormhole or equivalent of a space highway (in fact this latter metaphor is really what I'd like) a sort of conduit through realspace, but which permits entry and exit at any point (not good) or at designated exit and entrance points (good). If I go instead with an hyperdrive-like idea, such as might be found in Star Wars or Star Trek's warp drive (which I feel like is the most vraisemblable option I'm got) then I've got to explain why it can't be usedinside a given system, and how that doesn't just end up being inconsistent with itself. So, the idea I'd thought of is some sort of radiation or gravitics dealio with the jump drive, whcich could destabilise or be actively harmful to any one of the innumerable systems within a solar system. But either of these would have effects if they were operated near the solar system too. Now, it's true that the Oort cloud might be far enough away to work, but the likelihood of accidentally sending a string of comets into the elliptic is not so great. Now a better option might simply be to avoid contamination of a system, biologically. If systems are considered a prior protected zones, et il faut faire des recherches avant qu'on puisse y entrer, ça peut fonctionner.

Mais je n'en suis pas convaincu.

Not sure whether he walks in on @pilot's story telling or if is @pilot, some years or months before when he's just getting used to this life. I need to work on the causes of this. For whatever reason people are being sent out in ones and threes in ships with hardly any space, really it's just a cockpit, engines and a possibly massive payload. Operating machinery ? Providing support and critical thinking ? Observing ? Have AI succeeded in doing anything, but haven't the critical thinking or human spirit that makes the job worthwhile ? Lone rangers of a new kind. There is no metaphor for what these guys are doing or really any of this story and that's something I hadn't realised. Where we are in history, there's no metaphor in the past for it. There are similarities and there are differences, but this is not 'Jedi are samurai', 'stormtroopers are Nazis' simple. In each of the situations were looking at there were stages leading up to something, which only afterwards did we characterise as being one way or another, taking snapshots of history and labelling them with a hyphen between to dates as though they were in any way representative of an epoch and not a moment. In a way it's true, a sketch may be truer of a whole where a detail piece may be accurate of a part. And there is no reality but reality no matter how you consume it.

This same police report/news article is the one that will be sitting on Sergeant Norðdahlson's desk soon (Yes, this particular annotation does seem a little out of place, but I assure you that it is not. It has a purpose here.) When pîlot pulls up the station interface to order food, he swipes past news and update feeds including the story that will draw a certain P. I. to his death. (Actually, he may already be dead. I'm not solid on the timing of all this quite yet.)

Most edgestations grow what crops they can with artificial lights so far from the sun, and there are usually some delicacies from other systems as well. Bread: about the only thing that gets made fresh on a daily basis.It's kind of odd, but it's a holdover from a subsidised grain trade several hundred years before. Now it's cultural.

@pîlot makes his way around the hall, carrying a metal tray. The caf used up its supply of fresh fruits and vegetables in the first few weeks, and today it's all freeze-dried, rehydrated stews. Not that anyone particularly cares. They've been eating “space food” for a little over a year now. After leaving their respective planets, most get used to the food during the two to five months travel to the edgestation — usually. By the time they reach the constellation, they've nearly forgotten the smell of fresh food.

@pilot glides back to his table, setting the tray down lightly. A bowl of potato stew sloshes lightly under its cover; and @pîlot breaks a loaf of bread in two, setting one half in the middle of the table. The rest he continues to tear into small pieces, pushing them through the small hole in the lid that left the soupdish looking very plump.

‘It's not the texture. When you've been wearing what amounts to an expensive diaper all day for the past three months, one gets used to a certain fluid texture.’This is a conversation of sorts, though it's really more like a monologue. A few of the parents ask questions of the older spacer, while the young children look at him like some hero or alien or both. The older children pretend to be more interested in their own lives and entertainment, but you can tell their listening to in the way their half-laughs and in-joke smirks die down when @pîlot opens his mouth. He speaks in a low tenor range, a clear sort of voice that falls to a grumble at moments, but has a certain springy joyful quality when he is in his element. He has probably been sitting here for some time in silence, until one of the parents asked him a question. Then, he tells several stories — an old-timer's anecdotes. Stories of days and ages past (at least, as far as any of the listeners is aware), often with a practical lesson near the middle or at the end. He orders some food as he talks, almost unconsciously navigating the interface and choosing his meal. A moment later, he moves to collect it, bringing back enough for himself, but also a loaf of freshly-baked bread. This he breaks in half, tearing pieces off and placing them in his soup. The rest is broken again and passed out to the children and the parents, who accept it as manna and eat their pieces slowly, in silence. The old man is soon lost in his thoughts, no longer noticing anyone around him. The once listeners finish the break, the slightly sweet taste lingering on each tongue as they begin to stand and leave the mess. Eventually, everyone else is gone but @pîlot remains, still thinking. It seems, at a certain moment, as though he has come to some conclusion, and it is then that he looks over at the caf's attendant. A moments dialogue, and @pîlot continues to think over the decision he has just made. Then Gherkin comes over with the bottle and an age-old tradition is repeated, a meal with a friend.

‘It's the odour, says @pîlot in a hushed tone, that you notice first when you finally take your suit off.’@pîlot is describing something unique to "spacers" — belters and spacecraft crews — and especially pîlots. In many craft, a solitary space large enough to stretch, but not much bigger than a modern jet cockpit, is all the pîlot has. The rest of the ship is automated. This is also true for automated systems, where a small base exists for a pîlot and (or who is also a) mechanic, who remotely control and monitor mining vessels (among others) and maintain them locally. They rarely experience 1g, and spend a lot of time suited up, due to the often low-expense nature of their work and the quality of machinery and habitations.

The old pilot might as well have been an incontinent old coot to most of the handful of teens at the next table; but their attention is unwavering. At @pîlot's table as well, several spacersSo, what does it mean to be a spacer. I've already mentioned that most of the traffic through this edge-station, at least at present, is administrative or political in nature. At least, in terms of people physically on the station. There may be hundreds passing the edge, going to any of myriad worlds that the station gives access to. Spacers are neither. Neither tourists, nor government. They mostly are a sort of highly skilled, relatively mobile workforce with a strong incentive to do their work well. Their lives frequently depend on one another. Some have experienced various physical changes as a result of years of low- and zero-gravity life. Some have technical knowledge in various disciplines. Nearly all of the best bear the mark of Markesh, in symbol, skin or sign. (That is to say: the wear the symbol, have it tattooed on their body, or sign it — either as a gesture or alongside their signature).

of various ages are standing and sitting. A few hold their children close to listen. The older ones do not look at the old man, preferring instead to cock an ear towards him and nod or smile on occasion: the younger ones give each other the self-important look of those who think they won't repeat the mistakes of those who went before.

‘You learn to love stationsmell.’ One of the parents had picked up the other half a loaf and begun breaking bits off for the children. ‘If there's anything smells like planetfall when you're this far from home, it's ozone and the smell of baking bread.’

‘If only they could make a decent cup of joe’, said a blond(e) in a tracksuit, hair still drying from a run in the rec rooms, ‘I could feel right at home here.’

The younger crowd at the next table hardly looks up long enough to each take a piece of bread torn off the large loaf, and turns back to their screens, talking in low voices. They speak a in half-pidgin slang that the adults at the next table pretend not to understand. Pîlot only catches a few words as he begins to eat, but by the second bite he has already forgetten everyone else in the room.

Hours later, the tables are deserted. Screens simulate an external view along one wall, as the caf's attendant takes a long look at @pîlot, still sitting at the table.

‘May I take your dishes, pampa?’

The question did not seem to phase the old man, who looked unmoving and unmovable for a long moment.

‘We both know I'm your younger by almost a standard year’, he finally said, with a wry smile. ‘Bring out a bottle, Gherkin, eh. It's about that time again, old friend.’

The moustached caf attendant, grunted an assent and finished wiping downp the tables before returning to the counter. Leaning all the way over it, reaching under the counter, Gherkin grabbed three small glasses and a half-empty bottle from behind a box of dried fruits.{I have no idea what was once here, or why I added this footnote.}

It's only been a week for Captain Fitz Collins since last he met Pîlot in Gherkin's two-level amphitheatre of a mess, but it feels like a year has passed. Twice he's woken from dreams of lost battles — bodies and debris floating into the black — choking back tears and the fear that he would probably drift forever, a slowly suffocating body adrift on the currents of sun and star. Looking up now from his plate, he wonders what the disheveled-looking Pîlot has seen. They sit in sharp contrast one from the other. The Captain's crisp, white uniform and gold insignia are offset only slightly by the slight pinkish tinge of his wrists and neck. His eyes wear the weight of responsibility for and obligation to his crew, propped up by the knowledge that his post and reputation are well merited and hard won.

Collin's watches as Pîlot fingers the side of his face, stroking the side of the dark glasses that almost melt into his face. His face, like the faded green on brown leather of his ensemble, is worn wrinkled and supple by years of use and care. There is an edge to the motion, Collins notices. Nerves, or preoccupation. It's an involuntary movement. Pîlot catches himself and looks over at Gherkin almost sheepishly.

Gherkin looks as uncomfortable as might be expected of a man whose best outfit is a barkeep's apron and a borrowed dinner jacket, but his shoes were immaculately shined as he walked in to the mess and the silver star pinned on his shoulder is untarnished. There, too, is something that doesn't quite add up about him; Collins imagines that Gherkin, too, probably has some stories to tell.

Collins promised himself he'd ask about it sometime, then he turned to gaze out the great fly's-eye window that offered what was probably the least obstructed view of the outside of the station on the whole deck.Why do edgestations have gravity? Why do I think that they should?

It's got something to do with Changing Planes, the idea that the in-between places should have a commonality, a boredom, an unintentional comraderie. It also has something to do with the still vague explanation for edgestations. I don't think that it makes any sense for edgestations to be some undiscovered civilisation's deathgift to humanity. I don't see any place in the story as it is for sapient alien life, at least not initially. Unless this ties in with L'hexagon and whatever this extraterrestrial life is has long since been integrated into the human understanding.

Actually, lets assume that flora and fauna have been found on Jupiter's moons, and/or Saturn's.

B - Rather than having any non-humans, for the time being, lets just deal with humans. Different planets will have humans that grow differently, some more dramatically than others. Some planets and regions on planets will have wildly varying customs some of which are directly related to the availability of certain minerals, materials, foods, and entertainment. Whether or not flora or fauna were found in the Sol system aside from on Earth, many other systems have native flora and a fauna, though few of them have ecosystems so richly developed as on Earth (at least, few of those so far explored). None, however, have produced what might be called human-equivalent lifeforms. Nothing posessing of inherent language (which I distinguish from the capacity to learn words and limited grammar, as in the case of dogs, gorillas, dolphins, corvids &c.) or demonstrating the ability to reason.

‘

‘[either cuts right to the chase, or says something inane as small talk]’

‘When wearing civvies you're not a self-contained atmo anymore’, barked Pîlot, ‘that means we can— actually— smell it you when you fart.’

None of these slightly-swelling cadets has spent more than a few days in freefall before arriving at @ÉxupéryThis isn't in the Sol system, so Ceres the original doesn't make sense. Ah, I've got it. This is something vaguely like training; Pîlot is supervising an introductory group of remote equipment operators. Some of them will be asteroid mining while others will capture and dock ships and cargo to station either in orbit or in transit. None of them have spent more than a few days in freefall before this, much less true zero-gee.

station. Some of them have trouble orienting themselves in the room, as they try to find their stations.

A few twisted faces and a couple laughs come from the several rows of trainee miners. They've all come from technical schools on the three largest moons of the Astrenard@Astrenard, star system: at least three gas giant planets, two of which are in the habitable zone. Several large moons with masses permitting almost .9g. The moons are relatively resource poor. The most-habitable of them has remarkably little water so asteroid mining is a primary source of some materials, energy, and water.

Terraforming efforts are going well, but there is some worry that the large populations of the other two moons will run out of resources before the t—

system's gas giants.

‘They're called edgestations because they sit on the edge of what can be understood of a spherical gravitational field. Any further in — without assistance — and anything going slower than the speed of light won't make it out the other side.’

Imagine a satellite decides that it would prefer to orbit a different mass. In order to get there, the satellite must either gain or lose a requisite amount of velocity Δv. Any change in Δv entamesJust go with it, I don't care if it's not technically English, you get it.

an conversion of energy:

potential energy ↔ kinetic energy

Mathematically considering any object only as a point-mass, the greatest potential energy in an orbit is found when the orbiting object is furthest from the orbited, and the greatest kinetic energy is found when the orbiting object is closest to the mass orbited (Kepler's 2^nd Law). This is known as the Oberth effect, and the manœuvre itself as the Oberth manœuvre. Edgestations function primarily by producing a gravity well of such mass as to maximise the Oberth effect of such a “powered flyby”. The point-mass created is short-lived, though its effects are not. Those mass-bearing particles within the event horizon as the mass is instantiated and then self-destructs are accelerated to velocities otherwise quite impossible to achieve without the expendature of a great deal more energy than is contained in all of a solar system.

These bursts can be used to send messages, or masses, at speeds far exceeding the speed of light, if a receiving station is prepared to receive it. A corollary of the Oberth effect is that the greatest effect of a propulsive force on the propulsing body is had when closest to the orbiting point-mass. This remains true even as the orbits eccentricity approaches one and if the acceleration is negative. This all to say, a mass would be slowed proportionally to the mass of any object positioned 180° from the masses velocity vector. If after nearly passing through an point-mass of mass m_p an object was accelerated from velocity v₀ to v₀ + δv it would require an point-mass of like mass, i.e.m_m, where _m=_p, to bring the objects velocity back to v₀, having an effect equivalent to the  − δv.

when

m_p = m_m

One effect of this is that, since initial absolute velocity is almost always some positive real number, if v₀ is in the direction of the point-mass, there is some point at which as the Δv of the traveling vessels in approaching the point-mass being equal to the gravity exerted by the point-mass. The speed of free-fall becomes arbitrarily fast as the orbited mass grows (this is a power law), and the inertial change is almost imperceptible both on entering and upon leaving the gravity well since the acceleration experience by the whole system is uniform.

The unfortunate effect for any observing onlooker is that of any non-point-mass object stretching to infinity and then disappearing in the blink of an eye. For an observer in the moving frame of reference of the travelling point-mass, it would seem that an infinite amount of no time has passed between the stretching of stars on one side and their reresolution into points at different locations on the other.

At least, that's the idea. How to get around spaghettification is just one of the many holes in this particular method. Time dilation would have it that if one was to reach the event horizon, time would effectively stretch as the tidal forces ripped the observer apart. The only way this works is if the observer, too, is a point-mass such that no tidal forces could tear them apart.Oh man is it easier to write about anonymous persons in French. It is far simpler to avoid gendering a generic observer when the subjects gender has only to do with the gender of the noun, not the noun's referant.

Problem 1

The creation of a singularity the mass of a moon or small planet. a. where does the energy come from b. what effect does the sudden appearance of a planet-sized mass have on the surrounding area. The gravity wave alone would be incredible.

Problem 2

The survival of the transiting vessel.

In regards to Problem 2, an unexplained conceptual exercise presents itself. Simply put, a ship can't fit through the eye of a needle. And that's about the biggest matter-antimatter hole that we can sustain at the moment. That's without getting to the mechanics of warping and connecting discontinuous parts of space time.The biggest issue I have is one of how to handle creating a mechanic with unintended consequences. I don't want to create a hyperdrive or other ship-bound form of interstellar travel. I don't want to create a mass effect drive that could be miniaturised into guns, individual transport, &c. In fact, I'd prefer to avoid directly maniupulating fundamental physical properties — i.e. no intertia engines. An alcubierre drive is a bit too permissive, but I wonder if something like an alcubierre bridge might make sense. In any case, I strongly prefer to build a technology set that doesn't come with a ton of implications beyond the ability to travel between systems in reasonably long/short periods of time.

Chapter Two

Thread 1: Introduction to DaMer

Sêno, wakes up at home

Get up, sȅna — get up, pale one.

‘Mmhhuhhh..’, she grumbles sleepily. ‘How's about you get up, shadow.’

‘Nice one, smart-ass. I've been up since oh-four-hundred making you breakfast. Now ƿake, get thou upimperative, familiar form of lève-toi, in Srpskohrvatski — possibly using the Old-Church Slavonic form of the verb. Further discussion /see Old English.

.’

Sȇnosee Sêno Zlatarić

pushes the blanket to her feet and slowly sits up. She's been sweating again. Covered in beads of waste and water, she looks down at herself.

Herbrown ; her skin seems light brown (roughly Nina's skin tone.. definitely darker than I am now. But the green sky might have an effect on the perception of this. I'm not sure.)

skin glistens, catching the bright sunlight streaming in a half covered window on the other side of the bunk-room. Hair tumbles turbulently over her forehead and shoulders. I should have braided it. Silhouetted by these inkythe word tresses doesn't fit logically if her hair isn't braided; and locks doesn't work either. Tangles is not quite the idea, though it may be the most accurate. It should feel like her hair is ink, as though she woke in a murky pool of ink, sweat and water. The shower is going to wash off the sweat and the dust that still clings to her shoulders…

waves her near-black eyes let no light escapeThey have an almost gravitational attraction, as though they are infinite pools, always filling, never full.. nothing and everything is there. This description would be better put elsewhere. It's not the emptiness of a black hole, so much as the depth of a pool of water, I think.

. Shorter by a head than most of the other adults on Damer, she still fits the bunk she was given when she arrivedSometime during the latter part of section 1, I will include the beginning of the Damer colony. And it's already been around a while, when Sȇno arrives.

years ago. She stretches her legs, touching the end of the bed with the tips of her toes. For a moment Sȇno imagines what it would have been like for her best friend.

Dušansoul

was the tall one, when they sat on her high bunk for hours talking about the future with his legs hanging off the edge, talking of being a mechanic on one of the cargo ships in Council space or an adventurer in the Exploration Regionssometimes called the Ex-Regs.

or of joining one of the pirate bands that lived such daring lives in the stories of Antares Four.I'm not sure what I want to do as far as punctuation and grammar. I like my style, but having just looked at NCP, I've been particularly impressed by Tolkien's use of dialogue. So, I'm using his punctuation here (in this flashback).

‘In space it doesn't matter how long your bed is’, he said one lazy afternoon. Sȇno had been hiding from him for several minutes already and he still hadn't found her. That us, until Dušans's absurd thought caught her off guard.

‘What‽’ Sȇno, her giggling voice coming from above the high bunk.

‘Tu si, našao sam te!’« ‘There you are. Found ya!’ »

‘I almost thought you saw me already.’

‘I looked up there twice’, he said almost seriously, ‘how come I didn't see you?’ Dušan put one foot on the ladder and pulled himself up onto the bunk. There she was amongst the rafters, almost invisible among the storage against the red-brown wall, and taking up so little space that he'd mistaken his good friend for a shadow on the wall and her clothing for a three-day pack beside the other out-season equipment.

‘Watch out.’ She tumbled ungracefully unto the bunk. ‘I'm a merchant vessel on intercept! Pirates took out my nav thrusters and I'm headed into an asteroid.’

‘This is Blaire of the pirate ship Pustinjska Oluja,Пустињска олуја : 'Pustinjska' should now be correctly declined for adjectival position, and the phrase means: Desert Storm

surrender your vessel’, said Dušan, pausing for effect, ‘or your lives.’I see them playing this with their hands as fake walkie talkies and then the view hardcutting to what they're imagining, completely realistic but sort of like Drunk History, with them providing the voices for the action and the action being mimed and completely conforming to their imaginations.

‘Emergency generator online, secondaries destroyed, primary thrusters is still online.This would have the effect of allowing an escape, but not steering. Whch effectively puts

“Hands on deck. Activate emergency beacon.” Emergency beacon activated, “У помоћ! this is a Council Space exploration vessel id Niner-Eks-Double-Aught, need immediate assistance. Under attack by pirates. Repeat, this is a Council Space explo—”’

‘—sion in the making.’ he interrupted. ‘The Pustinjska Oluja has intercepted the beacon. Council Forces are too far away to help you now. “Alright crew, take 'em alive, we want their booty.”’

‘This is a science vessel, Dušan, there's no treasure in it.’ corrected Sȇno.

‘We want your science booty‽’ said Dušan laughing, ‘Doesn't have the same ring to it. What kind of pirates are they anyway? if they aren't after treasure.’

‘They want the data I've been collecting on aliens’, said Sȇno, plainly believing was obvious. ‘They've discovered a new species of humanoid with four arms that breathes through its skin. They want to want to cut it into bits and put the bits on slides. It has natural camouflage.’

He laid back, putting his head on the pillow next to hers. Then, pulling his legs out from under himself, let them dangle off the edge of the bed. ‘Like you, zlâto. You're a ghost Sȇno. You could be walking upright in the desert and no one would see you if you didn't want to be found—’ He turned to catch her eye and for a moment as he held her gaze, he seemed to smile and cry with his eyes at the same time.

‘Sȅna, ti si sȅna.Assuming they're either speaking hrvatski or are constantly codeswitching between that and OffAL, his actual words wer something like Sêno, you're a real Sȅna

’

Sȅna, ti si sȅna.

That's how Sêno remembers it anyhow, but his legs don't hang off the bed anymore, and he doesn't talk about space quite so much anymore.

‘Are you coming, zlȃto? I'm leaving in a minute. It's nearly sunup.’

It's been three years since he lost them, but Dušan is hardly a child anymore. And today is a good day. On a good day Duša lives up to his name.

When Sêno pokes her head through into the kitchen, he greets her with a glance away from the stove.

‘SȅnaSerbocroatian: n., ghost, pale one

, it is good to see you.’

‘What smells good?’

‘It's not the stew or the pancakes I've been toiling over all morning. Didn't you say that everything I cook smells terrible?’

‘Still tastes the best’, she returns with a grin.

‘I haven't lost my tongue, too.’ Dušan laughs. ‘Metalwork and the cooking fumes may pickle the hairs of my nose, but I've tasted these pancakes. They're horrid.’

Burn the блины once and it follows you forever, even if you become the best cook in the house. But if it ever bothered Duša, it did not show.

In addition to the блины, there were potatoes, a massive skillet-full fried with the last of the onions. The crops are doing better this year, but the ground here still is not very fertile even after years of balancing and re-treatment.

‘It's the pickling of your nose that has your tongue confused.’ And, he adds with his eyes, who the hell puts pickles on sweet pancakes‽

Which doesn't stop him making them. Dušan takes the extra to those still working the third shift at the forges before going to work himself in the 7abring.

Maybe on @Novii Arabat they let machines handle the fab-work, but mechanics, engineers, and other skilled labourers have always been needed to help on Damer to maintain the mining equipment and repair the inevitable and numerous hardware and software failures. Whether it is welding and forging new parts and equipment, maintaining refineries and vehicles or wiring hydraulics and sensors, there is always more to do.

These days he is more zlàtār than kòvāčgoldsmith than black[smith] : Dušan now spends most days programming the software and repairing the hardware that controls the mines many machines, whether autonomous or piloted.

, but he still loves to watch the work and talk with his old workmates. The biannual shipments of new equipment usually are accompanied by a few techs to help introduce the upgraded tech, and enjoy the temperate climate.

‘Zlȃto [darling], my batteries.’The mobile power supply for the scooter lasts for days if it's not in heavy use. There is a spare cartridge for emergencies, but it drains a lot faster than the regular one.

B - show, don't tell.

‘They're nearly charged’, says Sȇno.

‘Still got a couple hours on this set. I'll change 'em tomorrow. I'm heading into the workers' centreThis needs some flavour. It may remain the "worker's centre" but I need to decide whether there is a celebration of some sort or he is going to a regularly scheduled potluck. There's a lot — sociologically — missing in my current understanding of the Hex.

early, before the rush. Should be able to charge up there if I need it.’

Sȇno shakes her head in resignation. Duša's always liked to feel like he is riding on the edge.

The warm air in the kitchen rivals that of the sleeping area, and sweat still clings to her bare shoulders and chest. Sitting legs-crossed at the low table, she eats the breakfast her friend made, letting the predawn chill wick at her bedhead from the open windows as the kitchen cools.

Dušan leaves before the sun, taking the extra foodstuffs and gliding slowly away. The low hum of the chairvelocity brakes; energy recapture flywheel

and the light flapping of his chèche in the wind are the only sounds in the still morning.

One foot rests on Sȇno's thigh, the pressure turning the sole white then slightly red. Sweat from her face and hair collects between shoulders and drips onto crossed legs.I need to shower. (translate this into Serbo-Croatian)

Savouring the last bite of sweet, warm pancake, she walks over to the wall and pulls the shower curtain around herself. The muscles in her neck tighten and then relax as the cold water hits her skin and finally the sweat and feverish heat of the night sloughs off and disappears, to be recycled with the rest of the water.

Water is one luxury afforded the metalworkers and mechanics.The 2^nd Law (Explicit) | Muse | The 2nd Law Isolated System

The 7abRing barracks gets first access to the cool mountain water from the reservoirs just outside the outer habitation ring before it is routed above the forges. There it is heated and sanitised before being distributed to each ring's two drinking water reservoirs and the to camp hospital on the far side of the hexagon.

Sêno and Dušan had worked in the mess during their stages, serving the meals that keeps everyone in 7ab from succumbing to the[or: Damer's]

slightly toxic atmosphere.

From time to time he would stop by the shops and watch them at work. It didn't take long for some of the older mechanics to take notice of him in the corner and the way he looked at the machines.Actually this might make sense if he were to begin at the mess after loosing his legs, but I prefer the idea that he's discovered something he loves and gone for it, he's been ambitious and succeeded, and then it was taken from him. He's still happy, but he's lost his sense of ambition. It is for this reason that he moved from the mess to the forges, and has since moved to microcircuitry. It might make sense that Dušan initially learned to love mechanical engineering by watching Sêno's father at work. Her name being what it is, I think it likely that her father was a mechanical/electrical engineer. Her mother was a botanist as far as I can tell. They went from farmers on Blaire (where they tested techniques that were destined to be used on Damer as well as helping to curb the effects of famine on Blaire's less breadbasket continents ) to sustainers on Damer (where they contributed to keeping the mining town alive).

As far as his future ambition, I presume that he'll fulfill his childhood dream of piloting ships. I imagine he's always kept up with the modern state of astrodynamics and has a passing familiarity with nav hard-/softwares, and modern control systems. I imagine he'd know how to plot and verify complex trajectories in the 6-space chaotic sea, though that might better be something learned on the job as an asteroid miner or on Malkesh Station — one place where legs mostly just get in the way.

Yes I said 6-space chaotic sea. It's nearly accurate. The chaotic sea is relevant when talking about the restricted N+1 body problem, and specifically when it comes to the Interplanetary Transport Network. This is something like an interplanetary tube system made up of regions within the complex gravitational field of the system. This is a system R³ in which everywhere has both a position [x, y, x] and a velocity [v_x, v_y, v_z]

His arms are still like a kòvāč.The OffAL (because it sounds like 'awful' ; originally : OffLang) word describes him better than the srpskohrvatski[fn:68] one. It is rare for an Official Administrative Language word to be better, but the native tongue only describes the job, not the person.

Blacksmith. But the pale, contorted scars that now mark them, and what remain of his knees, are like a dead fire against his dark, dark skin. His skin was blacker still after a long days dust and work. He might have been the best welder in the Hex and a fine mechanic, but he was a better listener.I keep wanting to cover him in openness and an out-going spirit, but he keeps like shaking his head. He's open and jovial, but also very serious. You get a sense that when he says something, it becomes true; so that when he tells you you can do it, you believe him. Is he out of the maze of human suffering? No. He's still under the impression that his /pedi/‌cap has ended all chance of achieving his childhood dream of working on and maintaining the great tugs and ferries that move resources, entertainment, and people between systems.

Until the day he lost his legs he loved to hide in the shadows thrown up by the evening fires and listen to the conversations the old people and children were having. He rarely spoke and he preferred to listen anyway. The old and the young have insight not found in the tent-talk of the other working teens. Sêno was there too, listening to the children and talking with the adults. Now, when he sits in the shadows by the freeweek fires, he talks. He talks to his friends at the shop, and he talks to the stars.

Sȇno, now dressed in a light tunic and one of the three-day packs, steps out into the sun. It is low in the sky just over where the eastern ridge dips near the horizon, floating almost lazily, as though hanging from a silk thread ready to drop. Looking to the west she remembers faintly the first time she saw Damer up close. It had seemed so cold and empty from orbit, and when they again opened the windows of the people-haulerI want to call it the lander but in reality it's just the spaceship. Here ITS stands for Interplanetary Transport System, a modern idea of how we're going to do this, in which the second stage of the rocket is also the spaceship. But I should think that in the world of Rumple it would be similar. It is however, quite likely that such ships would have a higher capacity. I think they'd get several sets of colonists prepped at a rendezvous point, some moon or a Lagrange point, where launch costs aren't so high. This ship would likely be entirely canibalised if it's one of the first few, or stored outside the Hex if it's one of the last few.

, the few tinted portholes had made the green sky seem very dark and the red and white land seemed even lighter in contrast. The pit mines had not been half as large and didn't yet take up so much of the western vista. The unending plain and its gently rolling hills reminded her of the grassland of the home they left.

It had taken more than a few weeks to adjust to the half-length days and never quite dark skies. In five hours the sun will reach the other horizon, turning the mines into a purple pit with small sections lit by harsh lights. Damer sometimes still feels cold and empty during the day, despite the heat, but now there is no other place she knows, and it's as close to a home as anywhere.B - If Damer is like some of the cities in Northern Europe or Eastern Russia, where their primary economic activity revolves around their only export, the question is pretty clear; what happens when the well runs dry, the mines no longer produce, and the winter is coming. Certains peuvent vouloir rester, certe. Est-ce que ça donne assez de réalisme à l'idée de vouloir ou de devoir quitter son foyer ?

Je ne veux pas faire ça, je ne veux pas que les mines de Damer ne servent à plus rien, mais il me semble le plus probable des idées que j'ai eu. Pour l'instant les gens de Damer n'ont pas envie de quitter la planète, bien que la plupart n'ont tout simplement les moyens de la quitter quelque soit leur volonté.

B - resolved in this draft, Sêno will face the choice of whether to stay or leave (as will Dušan and their respective parents) over the coming summer, but not because the wells are dry and the mines aren't producing. This is a corporate overhaul due to a couple factors, not least of which the need to seem like they are not planting a colony (which would be a breach of the Exploitation of Resources regulations under which Fulminus Gamma received the rights to operate on Damer, but we'll get to that).

{{SKETCH}} Now these wide grassless plains and their wind-carved slopes and forms are as familiar as the gold flecks in her best friend's eyes and equally distant. {{/SKETCH}}

{{SKETCH}} [Once, when/When] Damer's satellites (i.e. moons) eclipse[d] the sunset, the red desert turned into an ocean : calm and impossibly huge, its aquamarine waves reaching to the horizon and a little beyond. {{/SKETCH}}

Sȇno takes a breath of the morning air, savouring it's lightly metallic taste.

Things could be different, but they could hardly be better.

After he lost his legs it was economy, that afforded them this domicile next to the mechanics barracks. He couldn't keep climbing the massive equipment for repairs and he might have been moved to the Popring. The maglev base of Dušan's chair doesn't work well outside the 7abring, and Popring had been overcrowded initially. They've been living here for three years ?

The freeweekas opposed to 'workweek'

is begun. In four cycles — two sleeps — the 7abringBooyah, I've always wanted to write this word as « 7abring », and pronounce it as “habring”, even though it makes more sense for it to be pronounced « фabring » (fabring). “Habring”, if written as such would actually end up as « гabring » and be pronounced “gabring”.

will be busy again, loud and active. But for these 48 hours only a skeleton crew will be working.

The mess, how else do you meet people

There are several mess halls around the Hex, and there are a few bars where grimy-tasting beer and quasiclientèle mix on off days. It would seem a lot shadier if there was any money to be made. The community is pretty small after all; everyone knows their neighbours. Most messes are near an R&R square, and it's pretty common to see off-duty miners knocking back a cold beer after a pickup game.Games in the Hex, there's an interesting point of research, what kind of games can you play in 78% gravity?

The covered porch that functions as the 7abring's main mess is organised like a potluck. The staple foods lay in pans at the centre of each of three tables, around which are spread out several rows of low tables and mats. Around these vats of protein patty, vitamin-enriched soup, and the like, in assorted pots, pans, cans and jars, are the varied experiments of the 7ab's culinarily-inclined denizens.

Over the years, some of these dishes had become popular and the most platable of those were spread out along the buffet-style line. In-between, hardly sorted, and haphazardly labelled were the rest — famous fungi, fermented cabbage, various yeasty doughs, rennet, and cheeses sweet and savoury. Most of it was edible, and only a few select dishes (these ones, in brightly marked containers) were likely to cause excess discomfort. A few denizens had become quite famous for their brews and their ingenuity in making a variety of strong and strongly-flavoured beveragesor should I say, hard and hardly-flavoured. More honestly, I shouldn't like to do them a disservice. There is little native to this planet that is readily digestible by humans, so much of their edibles are recycled or grown in or near the Hex. This is not to suggest a bland diet though. It certainly was initially, but nearly two and a half decades of human colonists have put a massive amount of effort into making the technically-edible cuisine provided them into a positive culinary delight, the likes of which are quite rare in those days, even on the more built-up worlds. One wonders if certain molecules found on this planet may have some effect.

.

It had not been two months since the prep team's arrival on Damer when the first of these brews was discovered belching away in a corner of the biology labs that were to be the primary centre in the Hex's Bioring.

Sêno, goes climbing

The Hex, now several hundred metres behind her sprawls, green centred, on the horizon. In front of her the canyon bridge and the cliff face on the other side. Red and yellow bands mark the different pitches, each with their own challenges.

The harder зарђкамен has more handholds but its jagged edges dare Sȇno to misstep and slice a gash into her suit or the flesh beneath. More than one daysuit's outer layer has come back after a climb with holes it did not have before. The vein of yellow Сϑракамен ten metres above is no less a hazard. Focus.

First, the bridge. The bridge is a single pylon, two metres wide and a two hundred long, spanning the canyon between Lookout Pointneeds better name

and the cliff face. Not a pedestrian bridge, the high wind in the canyon threatens to rip Sȇno off as soon as she sets foot on it. There is a safety wire on the bridge for maintenance personnel, and a few mishaps with the stupider/braver noobsto the colony

led to the "Authorised Personnel Only", "Fall Danger" and "No Diving" signs bolted to it.

Bridge, first pitch, second pitch, rest — third pitch, fourth pitch, fifth pitch, gone. Sȇno clips a quickdraw to her harness and then to the guideline and steps onto the bridge. The течностсϑрa river, rushes at breakneck pace down the upstream end of the canyon; it widens into a broad river below Sȇno's feet, moving lazily around the Columns a few dozen metres below.

‘At least put your toes in’, pleaded Dušan when they were twelve and thirteen, ‘It's not magma, Sȅna.’

‘Mum said it's not safe, Duša’, replied the younger. ‘The stream is not like back on Blaire. It's liquid but it's too dense for swimming. You'd break an arm jumping in, and stub your toe trying to walk in it.’ The immitation was canny but adept.

‘Yeah, yeah, alright’, laughed Dušan, ‘So, we won't swim in it.’

His pleading eyes nearly convinced her. ‘Come on, Sȅna.’

Sȇno wrinkles her nose, and then the corners of her eyes.she smiles here, indicating that she is agreed with him and will go.

In three or four hours the sun will come directly overhead and the cliff's shadow will no longer offer any protection from the north watchtower. Best get through the second pitch in time. Sȇno steps onto the bridge. The wind tugs at her hair kept back in a braid. The ground seems further away than when she was younger. The bridge, less wide; the wind, stronger.Eyeing the wall, she comes to the end of the bridge. Familiar holds make up this first pitch, honestly hardly a wall. From the Hex, these rounded shapes catch the noon sun and give this whole cliff a shimmery glint, like so many scales on a lizard. But it is still early and the whole valley, on both sides of the bridge sits in shadow. She climbs effortlessly what amount to body-width cracks between the outcroppings, rounded at the top which make up the columnar base of the crag. The rough bumpy edges of each scale give plentiful hand and footholds that a much younger @Sêno climbed often with a backpack of foodstuffs and rappel gear. Each one, about five metres tall, afforded a nearly level space on the top. Perfect for an outing; and as they lay in high, offset columns, one summer she had entertained herself immensely by having one meal a day on a different one.

She was fourteen before she set her sights on the nearly vertical face above it. Now familiar rock stretches in all directions. Another thirty metres above, a particularly flat section that gave her two months trouble. Short lengths of braided cord stick out of cracks invisible at this distance, giving the impression that the cliffs few chest hairs have been hastily shaven, and poorly. These are from the many times she tried to pass through this section and was forced to rappel or belay from a position with no way higher and no way to climb back down.

Perspiration drips from her face again and is borne off by the intermittent wind splashing against the cliff face and falling on to the river below.This previous line belongs when she's halfway up the cliff, struggling a bit, having expended a lot of energy, but not yet tiring. She's borne on, herself, by the near endless possibilities that abound when one is unburdened and unfettered. Her mind is on this one task, with the future planned, but only vaguely. She's often climbed this cliff, but only summited it once or twice before. Perhaps she's dreamed of what's on the other side / at the top. There's a near Unending world to explore. Perhaps, still yet, this whole colony exists in a crater ?!… Maybe not.. That would, however give some explanation of why there is a mountainous region, in something approximating a half circle (as much as we've seen) in a surface that seems unerodable[fn:82], barring this river canyon.. which I can't explain atm tbh.

Sêno means ‘hay’, after the open pastures and fertile land her mother loved. But it never really fit, since @Sȇno didn't know her mother long. @Sȅna, which means 'shadow' or 'ghost', fits her a lot better. I need to do something with this. A reference of some kind to the mother's naming / love of open pastures &c.

Fifty metres below, the ground seems to shimmer as it moves, slowly undulating. She grips a thin ledge with one hand, and explores the wall above her with the other. The crag is pitted here, but the edges are worn smooth. Most of the small divots in the surface are too small to put a hand in, but her fingers find purchase above her head. She allows her other hand to move up the wall, searching for another fingerhold.

She is already two metres above her last anchor, and there's another few to go before the end of the pitch on a small ledge.

A few minutes later, her daysuitdaysuits are outfitted standard with an airfilter and CO₂ scrubber good for about three days (on Damer).

jacket is tied around her waist and a rucksack hangs from the wall behind her, anchored to a self-belay deviceautolocking, likely mechanised and remote-controlled; but I like neither of these ideas much. I'd much prefer entirely mechanical forces and analog devices. If anything, mechanised devices and remote-control capabilities, while nice, will get in the way or cause trouble when they fail. I think Sêno wouldn't be phased if these fancy devices failed or did not work, simply because they have no part in her regular experience.

. The large flakes that resemble scales from farther away conceal a ledge large enough for several cots and a small stove. It is here that she will have to wait out the rest of the day for cover of dark and shadow.She's been climbing for nearly two hours now. This would be indicated by the shadows drastic changes due to the 3/4 length days. Maths need done, then correct the prose here.

Sêno, holding a pair of binoculars, looks out over the Hex. The six-sided ring looks larger from above. The farms on the north side seem to touch the horizon. It is a trick of the light. Silhouetted by bluegreen of the setting sun, the slight slope of the massive piles of fertile soil at the far end hides the ochre-red flatness beyond.

Shadow creeps over the valley, stealing along quicker and quieter than Sȅna herself. For two hours, she has climbed, and now there is not but to wait. Another two hours at least before the sun's light will disappear.

Sêno rummages in her sack for an apple. The flat fruit sounds hollow in her hand, but its flesh is juicy when she pulls it open. Half she wraps and returns to the bag.

Damer's nights have never been dark, but human eyes are little better than the grainy remote feeds slagcrawler pilots drive after dark.The cones are not sensitive enough to make out any colour for the few hours between dusk and dawn. Dusk and dawn, however, last almost half of the day. Since the day is quite evenly divisible into four sections of four hours, most people spend the four darkest hours indoors.

A night climb is tricky, and made harder by the use of night-vision equipment in the Damer's forbidding atmosphere.

She sets the binoculars to her eyes. To Sȇno it is as though a thick fog covers the world in every direction, she can just make out the close edge of the Hex indistinct in the brumous haze. But up close, everything is clear. The path she has been taking nearly lights up below her. The surface is dotted with ultraviolet markersUltraviolet wavelengths refract heavily in the atmosphere, so most active night vision is quite useless for surveillance. It is, however, still quite effective over relatively short distances. For this reason active night-vision equipment is a supremely useful tool in every miner's pack. Sêno has an old pair of cave-peepers that she found among her father's things. Dušan has modified the powerbank to be compatible with the longer-lasting batteries she carries in her pocket.

which draw @name-of-bug-plural to them like flowers do bees.]

The Bridge.

It's the first step; it should be as unimpeded as all the ones before it. But this time, yet again, it is the last step. The last step before she turns back to join the class, holding her field journal high to hide her glances towards the bridge.

Two thousand three hundred steps to reach the bridge. She has counted it out five times now. Maybe another several hundred to cross the bridge and get to the cachette. Then the wall.

Les autres élèves de première à l'École d'la mer jouaient ensemble dans la cour propre. Cet après-midi c'était comme un boule de nerfs prêt à exploser. Trente élèves couvraient une espace de dix mètres carrés. Deux ou trois se baignaient dans la fontaine mémoriale des Premiers Arrivés.

{{A description of the surroundings and the bridge, much like the one above. A first step, and then a first-person fall.

The students have just gotten out of school and will have a short academic pause (a few days, maybe a week or two) to allow for extra hands during the busy season.}}

Bridge, first pitch.

The first four metres of cliff past the bridge are really more of a scramble than a climb. Dushan loves to taunt her by running across the bridge and then bounding up the rounded stones embedded into the base of the wall. He stops halfway up and sits down waving his arms as though spreading a picnic blanket.

Further to the right, lower than most of the rounded boulders, the rock curves and buckles in a shape not unlike a lightning bolt. It is almost like a climbing tree on Blaire. A couple times Sêno tried to describe Blairic climbing trees to Dushan, but she never quite found the words to describe the twisting, entertwining laters of trunk that seemed to explode into a small shower of branches three metres up and again at six and nine metres. Each branch twisted and turned in sharp corners that flowered in spring.

Bridge, first pitch, second pitch.

Sêno scales twelve metres of familiar holds in a few easy movements. The fingerwidth crack that once frightened her barely registers as she moves past it in two practiced movements. There is an oval protrusion half a metre to the left, then a leg up and reach. Right hand on the ledge that feels like the edge of a windowsill, then the other hand. Right foot up hight and wide, left foot just under her hips. Stand.

She has never been tall enough to reach the next hand hold like Dušan or @Craslei could. Standing up on both feet — one directly under her — the hold is still too far. A light breeze tugs at the strands of hair that escaped being pulled into a haphazard bun. To the right, and at the same height is another hold. It looks smaller and less secure than the one to her left. But by standing on her right foot and smearing against the wall with her left, it is reachable.

Nope. Not today.

It is a four foot fall to the nearest anchor, and another four past that before the rope will begin to slow her fall. She slowly manœuvres her hands back to the sharpish ledge and bends her knees, lowering her mass until she is hanging from her shoulders. Her feet find the holds and she moves her left hand down to the oval protrusion. She unclips from the anchor just above her and retracts the excess climbing line into her hipbag. Back down the lightning bolt and a soft leap onto the bridge platform.

Clipping to the guywire with a short draw she takes a shaky breath and walks back to the other shore in even, measured steps.

One step further.

Sêno, takes a trip on a rocket ship.

The luggage is heavier than her four-year-old arms can handle, so she's just carrying the flight suit. She spent the past week learning to put it on and take it off again. Her friends have all tried it on, giggling when the suit began to tighten around their body, and gagging on the taste of sterilised air.Dialogue : something the father says, which might be humourous, but not necessarily so. A response by the attendant at the check-in counter. It might make sense that this conversation be held partially in hrvatski, the personal and humourous bits, and partially in OffAL, the administrative bits.

Everyone has been preparing for the trip. Her father's beard has been trimmed short for a month already and when he woke her up at oh-two-hundred his face felt like silk. Mother's hair, rarely so neatly attended to, keeps to its neat bun. She is a naturally joyful woman, a kind neighbour, who looks nothing like herself at the moment. Furrowed brow and clenched cheeks, she scowls at a joke her husband has just madepetty parting humour

to a customs official before giving herself over to a good-natured laugh.I don't know what culture this family is most influenced by, though they obviously speak Serbo-Croatian and OffAL, I don't yet know how the post-Earth culture(s) will interact and change.

It would be several hours yet before the rocket began its ascent, but that didn't leave any time for sitting about. At least not for her parents. @Srdjan's soft-worn hands bely their nimble strength as he types out the last reports he'll be able to write for almost a year. Náda's warm, crystal laugh echoes comfortably in Sêno's memory. She smooths out the frizzes in her daughter's once neat bun, then

For Sêno on the other hand—

— Regarde la costume que porte la dame là-bas là. C'est la capitaine, c'est sûr.

Sêno tugs on her mother's arm and indicates very matter-of-factly an elderly lady with a narrow, kind face standing at ease by the great windows.

— See, cause her suit is not bulky like ours, and she's got a throatmike and the hand switch on her sleeve.

Sêno scrunched up her nose and forehead like she'd seen her father do.

— You see that white part at the top, what does tha— this is where things start going a bit sideways for me, as I've not done enough research to actually write this section. I'd like her to describe the rocket, trying to make the big science-y thing interesting to the young girl. I'm not sure how precocious Sêno is, at four. If she's anything like Seryozha, than she'll be really proud to show off what she does know, which will likely be a simplified version of whatever she picked up from her parents talking about the trip.

Milka smiles a wan smile at the child pointing emphatically at her collar. She wears the suit that willIn Sêno's father's words: keep their bodies together as the rocket shook and shaked and accelerated to infinity-speed (literally 'life-risking speed' speed). Sêno thought that was silly but now looking at this elderly lady, whose kind wrinkles hung like drapes on her cheeks and neck, it suddenly seems more likely. »

help her body cope with the first few hours of weightlessness with a straight back and a sense of familiarity that comes only with practice.

— I was — once — a captain, says she, moving to sit next to the child. On a ship like this one…

Despite the grey hairs, she holds her shoulders proud and her back straight as she describes the massive cylinder in the distance.

{{ Her mother stands to the side listening to the elderly lady with a wistful calm. She is listening to this woman inspire a sense of wonder and awe of space and travel, of new places and of discovery. And she feels the child's link to this world severing slowly and all at once. Never again will this place, which has been a home to come back to, hold the same magic and beauty in the child's eyes. Sêno, her only daughter, whose eyes and smile are the very image of her father's, will hunger for space in a way that her mother will always understand but never feel. Her mother loves the smell of wheat growing and rain on rich black dirt in the spring, she loves rolling down hills and digging toes into garden earth. Her mother is giving up a life she loves (and for what ? I don't yet know).Worse yet I don't know how to show this from the perspective of a child, this child in particular.

This is particularly hard for her to watch. For a child to so readily abandon this place that is her world, that holds so much meaning and memory. There is a deep melancholy to the bittersweet. It would easily be the basis for an infectious depression that would grow throughout her life. I hate this idea, but there's something so true about it that I can't just throw it out. I hate this. Why does Srdjan want to go, either? Are they leaving succesful careers in fulfulling roles to live on a backwater for the next thirty years to work for a company that probably doesn't care about them and might leave them there – by choice? Was this a decision that they fought over, trying to convince each other that it wasn't so bad on Blaire, that they had other options, that it wouldn't possibly be worth leaving an environment that they knew, despite its toxic social pressures and the continuous erosion of rights in the ever-expanding rural regions? How does someone in that position get the chance to leave the county, much less the planet; who in their right mind believes that it is in their best interest to do so? They are in some kind of debt… top-notch educations (with top-notch loan payments) in a climate with no jobs for environmental scientists? Well, hullo, Sam. I think you've just saved Srdjan and Náda. She would have loved to work a small farm on Blaire and live quietly with her husband. But neither can avoid being politically active in their early-thirties, and Náda spent her young adulthood on autopilot between classes, work and alcohol. Sêno doesn't, and may never, know these things. Her memory of Blaire is as a daydream, and her childhood starts for her with an arrival.

Blaire is the place of Náda's childhood, and her coming-of-age. This is the place she overcame and was overcome, and where, eventually, she built a wholesome life with her husband and young daughter. This is the place she hoped to grow old and watch Sêno grow up, and see the smile on Srdjan's face, wrinkle, deepen and soften. This is the place where her marriage gown would hang from a low branch in the place she had prepared.This is part of a Labelle Île burial ritual. Graves are prepared a few weeks after marriage, and up to three trees are planted around them. When one dies, a pre-selected personal affect is afixed permanently to the tree and allowed to decay, along with the body. The item in the branches, the body among the roots. Náda has long since decided that her wedding gown would hang by the shoulders from her tree. Srdjan's was to be their rings. But neither died on

This is the place her parents had learned to know her for her. Blaire is Náda's triumph. And now she is to leave it, with a deep-biting sadness, and a force of will that could rust steel. }}

The elevator shakes disconcertingly as it reaches the top of the tower. Sêno grabs for her father's hand reassuringly rough hand.//The shuttle feels rather cramped as the thirty odd passengers and several more crew members board and find their seats. @Sêno is buckled in a five-point harness, between her parents and two others. The observation deck is off-limits at this point, but her father points it out anyway, mentioning that she'll get to see their new home from a million kilometres away. ///Thirty-odd ? Is this a full flight ? Is there any expectation of passengers or are the cargo and passenger manifests carefully managed to keep costs low ? Are all these passengers going the same place ? I should think the various destinations would be interesting enough to provoke travel between several places, and not simple railway style point to point travel with terminus at economically important places. (Though there's nothing wrong with that during certain stages of construction). //It might be interesting to show an edgestation, where multiple nodes are connected. I'm still uncertain as to whether multiple jumps would be required to move between systems (ie, SC style as well as requiring basically wormhole style or hexagon map style travel between systems not directly bordering one another. ) //I don't much like that idea except for the trains thing. I'd much prefer a long journey with as many detours as necessary to happen in-system rather than between systems. //See the thing is it may be a months long journey to get to an edge station, (or depending on certain factors the trip might only take days or hours) but I'd prefer to avoid writing years (decades or centuries long trips into a story that in parts really should be an interpersonal development story. These are not Foundation-style Puddlejumpers, by which I mean basically dimension-hopping teleporter. There's more of a Stargate-ness to it, in that one uses adresses and star alignment to get places, but there are no jump points near planets (as this would likely destroy them? I'm thinking impossible to contain gravity or em band effects. But the consequences of any such thing are a bit too much.

Sêno has spent most of the trip trying to imagine their new home. For days she was peculiarly quiet.

Then the floodgates burst open.(There are a few ways to tell this, including giving her parents dialogue, and OSC-style making them proper characters, as I fear I shall have to do anyway at some point. Might as well try now. There's no use describing them if they're not going to do anything.[fn:98])

— Is it cold on Damoe, like in Noekha City?Norkha City is the farthest place Sêno has ever heard of, far away in the southern hemisphere where it's cold most of the Year. She lives in a place much like a bigger, more arable Australia. It's a massive island situated just north of Blaire's Tropic of Capricorn that produces much of the Northern hemisphere's agricultural products. The island is organised rather like a semi-planned web. Ports and shanty-towns along the eastern and southern coasts handle transport to the Archipelagos and through them to the northern and southern Asrianic lands (separated by a massive range of near-impassible mountains). The northern ports handle the more populous northern island nations, while the Western airports ship cargo and more valuable small-quantity-high-price agricultural products along great circle routes to the far side of the planet. Living in the far more varied climates of the South is difficult and most societies in those regions are dependant on Northern foods for some of the year, and on Eastern entertainment for their sanity.

We use the right-hand rule for determining north and south on a given planet so that the sun always rises in the east and sets in the west. Axial tilt, planetary mass, rotation speed, atmospheric composition, magnetic field, and other variables greatly affect a given planet's climate and how a society survives on it.

— In the daytime it is very hot. At night, too.

— Are the lakes on Damer too cold for foot-baths ?

— There aren't any lakes to speak of. And apparently the only rivers are poisonous.

— How will we drink ?

— Fresh water is piped in from high in the mountains.

Taking a map s/he enlarges the selection, a region in the south(north?) band that will be home for the coming decades. « Here's the water, but people can't live there.

— And there's no money there, Sêno's father murmurs to himself. Tu sais, ma puce, que les cieux de Damer n'ont pas le bleu dont tu as l'habitude.

— Hein? Mais si, j'ai entendu dire que le ciel a une couleur bizarre—

— Oui, dit il d'un ton amusé, le ciel est un v—

— et que les locaux sont malformés!

— —ert léger.

Her mother stifles a suprised laugh.

– Enfin pas beaucoup. Damar doesn't have any native population. Statistically speaking, we might be the funny looking ones. (Not all the colonists are necessarily from a similar environment or planet.Well, here's something I hadn't much thought of. So, Damer is rather smaller than Earth, which introduces some interesting issues. At 50% the mass of Earth, gravity is approximately 78% (based on a figure I read earlier to day in a piece by Jacques Vallee), which would have some pretty interesting effects over time. This would likely be a crushing experience should either Sêno or Dushan find their way off.

)

— So, what colour is the sky ?

— A light green, responds her mothers bright voice, like jade.

— Whyzz'at ? Sêno asks around a bite of bread.

— [Explanation.This gives a chance to look at the atmosphere of Damer, or at least introduce it. I think it's got to have a decent oxygen level, which would allow either little or no mask use in certain contexts, similar to living at high elevation, but I'm don't know the physics of that. I think it more likely that either a mask or a direct to blood oxygen regulator would be necessary. (This second idea, I quite like. I wonder if it could be done in a foodstuff or if it makes more sense to have an oxygen pump as some diabetics do an insulin pump.)

] The sky on Blaire is blue because the sunlight is refracted in the atmosphere scattering the higher wavelengths of light and allowing the longer ones to pass through. It's all the refracted high wavelength colours that eventually hit our eyes from all directions so it looks blue.(red and purple cone; why isn't the sky purple ? pertinent question. We see red and purple with the same cone… more explanation, understanding. [This is all exemplifying a kind of curiosity-engaging parenting, while serving to the audience as exposition of Damer and explanation of its pecularities.Damer's sky and ground are of a different colour, much like Mars. On Earth the sky is blue during the day, dark blue or black at night, and red, purple, orange and yellow at sunset. On Mars, the sky is generally butterscotch during the day and can have a blue tint/tinge at sunset and sunrise due to the water-ice in the atmosphere. Damer features a breathable atmosphere at a survivable pressure (although storms or hazardous weather might be enough to require masks or pressurisation of interior spaces), and so it would likely have a colour much more similar to the blue of Earth, but I'd like it to be green. This can be done by changing the mix of gases in the atmosphere (both at ground-/sea-level and in the upper atmosphere), and/or by changing the distance and stage of the star around which Damer orbits.

])

{But now, as she is suiting up — finally — and drinking accel juice (to prevent nausea) before embarking, her excitement catches up with her. The long wait in the warm quarantine room, with its massive triple pane windows catching the sunset, is exhausting. Before long she is laying on her back on the seat asking more questions, attracting mixed reactions from the other voyagers-in-waiting. Some smile good-naturedly, some try to look annoyed to cover the launch-apprehension. Her father carries her up the stairs to the second level where she can get a better look at the launch vehicle's nose, a dozen metres away.

The sound of the launch is almost deafening, even dampened as it is by the fuselage and the seat cushions. At first it feels like her arms and legs are pressed to the floor, and for a few seconds she wonders if the whole rocket is being crushed from end to end. The weight eventually lessens, and she feels her mother's hand on her leg.

No, it must have been a glove, we were suited up. But it felt like it was her hand, I remember her soft skin as I put my hand in hers, and felt better about where we were. Maman indicated a porthole across from she and I, next to Papa. Blaire turned under them, the sun — our warm Sullenze — peeked back over the horizon bathing the passenger cabin in golden light.I would like to play a little with this idea of memory as inherently narrative, which is to say informative but subjective, emotional rather than objective. At least in most cases. Like, my characters might just as easily forget why they walked into a room or do something automatically due to habit before realising it.

By which I mean. Past narrative, especially flashbacks, are interrupted by editing or correction or further memory.

Sêno is asleep when the launch vehicle docks with the orbiting carrier.

Wrinkles

Sêno sweats in the three-day-suit. She feels the drops of sweat on the backs of her thighs hanging, waiting. It is hot on top of the dragonSomewhat relevant.

, despite the buffeting breeze that tosses dust into the air along the upper edge of the ravine. The suit does not sweat. Sêno curses, зут. She should have seen a faulty connection. Or did a fan get damaged when she hit her knee.

‘I'll have to run a diagnostic’, she says scrunching her nose at the idea. Dušan was right. I need to take better care of my stuff.

Beyond the “fertile” Hexagon, Damer's landscape is desolate. The valleyIs this just a hydrogeological formation, or is there an impact crater here?

shelters the Hex against the grating, weathering winds.

They are not the trees she remembers from her childhood — great sprawling things — rather, the improperly proportioned skeletons of what pass for trees on Damer stick out of cracks in the kamen at odd angles.

From the tips of the spines that pass for branches, metres of hairlike material float about these trees. The thousand or so younger strands at the top of the heighest branches seem to hang upside down, suspended in the air, floating towards the west following the thin, spider-like wrinkles that wend their way across the night sky.

The thicker, older strands are full of the hard sediment kicked up from the red ground during the winter storms. They seem to hang from the clouds as vines, climbing air, covered in thin kamen flakes.

Sêno, there and back again.

When Sêno wakes, the pounding sun has nearly gone down, but its glow remains on the horizon to the west, faintly. Standing tall she looks out towards place where the sky meets the ground, jumping to see the sun go over the horizon a second time.

On either side, the flatlands seem to stretch forever to the east. It's less flat once you're standing on it, more like dry skin. Dimpled and in places crisscrossed with hairline fissures that release CO₂-rich plumes. The plants that do grow up here cluster around these fissures, waving in the jets.I think a cord of these plant fibers would be quite strong, and perhaps these plants might store deposits of Sthromite in crystaline or lattice forms. I'm not sure whether I want this to be useful as a building tool (superstrong, but stretchy, rope) or as a weapon (hard deposits along the vine like glass embedded in a whip).

The plumes are a little like underwater vents, releasing large amounts of CO₂

[Sêno sees a bright blue luminescence in the northern storm banks. To the south, presumably the same is happening (do we see orbital footage of this?). It is the first signs of storm season, a time of year when Damer passes through a perticularly strong and turbulent solar wind from its sun which tears through the magnetopause's seive and causes massive electrical storms. It can, in rare cases, affect the northern and southern storm belts enough to send inclement weather in the Hex's direction.]

Dinner, but this time with storm gear.

Convinces Dušan to go climbing.

‘Remember when you asked Mama why we didn't just operate the cutters from here, remote-like?’

‘She said something like, “Duša, darling, our antennæ are not strong enough. The kamen prevent the signal… the meaning is lost.”’

‘Something like that, yeah’, she half-sighed. Sêno knew those were exactly her mother's words.

Where Sþrakamen is plentiful, iron is worth little and all the other little phrases she'd throw about. Sêno began to wonder where these bits of wisdom had come from.

‘Yeah? Why dja ask?’

‘I found something before the storm—’

‘—besides the tree.’

Chapter Three

Thread 2: Malkesh Station, a history

part 1 :: Community

1. ‘Owen! Come quick.’

   The banging on his door was urgent but was not repeated. It did not need to be: his shoes were beside the door, and a sandwich sat on the table.

   The long, low countryside blurred past as his legs pump under him. Up the hill, the others ran towards the great hill that gives the town its name.

   They would reach the fence before him.

   ‘Wait’, he yelled at them, but his voice was immediately drowned out. Looking to the partly cloudy skies in an agitated fixation as a sound like screaming thunder passed overhead, they reached the top of the hill.

   In a few more strides he could see them standing shoulder to shoulder against the barrier. Slamming into the fence alongside them, an out-of-breath Owen stared longingly at the clouds billowing from the launchpad.

   A column of blue-grey reached straight up until high above, the early morning sun turned it bright white.

   ‘There's a sight’, said one of the Hammel boys, turning non-chalantly and unwrapping a chicken sandwich. Owen glanced over just as the boy took a bite, enjoying the attention just as much as the mayonnaiseDon't ask me why there's mayonnaise. This is one of the older, well-off kids of the neighbourhood. Of course he's got mayonnaise.
   
   .

   The fog began to lift from the valley as the sunlight crept down the smokey column, and the children's interest began to wane.

   Most of the children pulled a pastry or a pie out of some pocket or bag and began to walk back, singing softly as they fell back into the morning shadow of the great hill.

   There was a tap on Owen's shoulder, then a jangle of the fence as someone sat down hard against it.

   ‘What did I miss.’

   Gehrmeid lived closer to the hill, so he'd been one of the last woken. He'd probably have slept right through it, like most of the adults did, if they had not gone and woken him, too. The children never missed a chance to see the rockets fly; Gehrmeid never missed a chance to see them land.

   ‘Take a look.’

   ‘It looks like clouds to me, Owe.’

   The low fog began seemed to shiver and then a soft clap and a low rumble hit the ridge at the same time. The base of the column began to move almost to shake — and shine.

   As though it had never left the pad, a launch vehicle stood smoking slightly on the pad. Sunlight hit the top of the launch tower and fell towards the launch vehicle as they watched in rapt fascination. The shuttles and trucks began to move around the pad like beetles and bugs under a log, and then just as the sunlight hit them, the tower arms began to swing into position.

   ‘What is going on, why is the tower swinging back around? Didn't they take off?’

   ‘They did.’

   The sense of wonder was obvious in Gehrmeid's voice, of would have been if Owen had not been so very confused. He had seen dozens of lift-offs and two or three landings already. They always landed on one of the pads a few kilometres off — too far to see anything but the smoke — and it took half a dozen hours to load and prep rocket for launch. So where had this one come from. Then he caught what Gehrmeid had said. If they had not scrubbed the launch, that would explain the column and the sounds of take off. Yet to land on the same pad and so soon.

   ‘This one was already on the way down…’, Owen trailed off, consternation tinging his voice.

   ‘Did you see the one that took off?’

   ‘No’, it was too dark and I got here after it had left the pad. Owen thought about what it must have been like to see the tower rotate away and watch the long slender cylinder slowly come off the pad before being surrounded by billowing clouds only to break through the top like a lone spire in the fog.

   ‘They hid it.’ Gehrmeid clapped his hands and stood up slowly, ‘The landing. They hid it in the wake of the one that took off.’

   If only, thought Owen, he'd been there a moment earlier, he might have seen the great ship catch the light just as the growing column caught the sun's rays. Maybe he would have seen the Foresight emblem glint in the light.

   ---

   Owen and Gehrmeid walked down through the morn-shadow, chewing slowly on halves of Owen's fast-breaking sandwich. The taller and elder of the pair waved a hand in greeting as they passed the community gardensDo I say “communal” or “community”?
   
   . The bent back of Frau Kellers stepped out of the greenhouses, letting a rush of warm air escape and catch her the stray white hairs around her temples.

   ‘Guten Morgen, Frau Kellers. Wie gehen Sie?’

   ‘Guten Morgen, Frau Kellers’, called Owen. ‘We just saw the rockets.’

   « I'll bet you have », mumbled Frau Kellers, raising an eyebrow as if to ask if that what all the ruckus was aboutI'm not certain as to whether I'd prefer to leave such sentences — whether thoughts, interpretation, or hypothetical speech — in block or italics. I'm tempted to leave them as the rest of the narrtation as it allows the reader to interpret these as they wish, whether as accurate translations/interpretations of looks and gestures or as narrative interpretation and therefore biased as any narration may be.
   
   . The gesture scrunched the spider-web of wrinles that warmed a severe face. More stray hairs than normal escaped from the neat bun and the babushkaFind out the German word for this kind of light headscarf common in Eastern European, Slavic, and former Soviet communities.
   
   tied under her chin. ‘Etwas gehts nicht diese morgen, Herr Sturmpferd.’

   She turned back to the greenhouse door without any more ceremony and paid no more attention to either of them. Gehrmeid took step towards the greenhouse and then the pile of dirt and potato greens Frau Kellers had dumped out. He looked over where Owen had been standing with an apologetic shrug and then followed her into the greenhouse.

   Owen had already left them to their plants. He walked on past Gehrmeid's place with it's squash patch out front, past Herr Colmott's cabbages, past Greta Halburg's turnips and beets, and past the house with the screened in porch where Selador de Vis and his cats sat in the warm summer evenings.

   Herr Gottlieb gave the maths lesson first today. Owen set his boots next to the other children's muddier footwear and slipped in to a desk in the back of the one-room school. History came next, and then philosophy for the older children. Owen and the other five-year-olds went across the street to the mechanics shop afterwards. The Ottoman Empire had risen and fallen by the time the sun hit the windows, and the ten-year-olds got out the dictionariesPhilosophy is conducted by comparatively analysing the translations that the older children make of philosophy texts from the original languages.
   
   .

   Theodor and Greta volunteered to stir the lunchpot next door at the Berger's and then they called Owen and the other five-year-olds to eat before running across the street to call the older school children.

   After they had all thanked Herr and Frau Berger for the meal, the elder children went to their stagesThis is a concept that will be fleshed out over the coming chapters. Owen will eventually do a stage as a miner, a cook, and a childminder. Most children do four or five stages by the time they reach twelve. Usually you start at eight with one of the less labour intensive processes, baking, painting, running messages. Then there's the second set, partialy supervised: gardening, simple mechanical repairs, roofing, plumbing. Then the autonomous stages. These last ones are supposed to be done your last year before you choose your apprenticeship.
   
   and Owen returned with the younger children to the schoolhouse for the geography and agriculture lessons.

   ---

   ‘I'm back, Papa.’

   Owen gave his father a kiss and then lugged the basket over to the table. ‘We have strawberries today, from the schoolshed shelves.’

   ‘They look good, Owen. Small, but sweet.’

   ‘Don't eat those, Papa.’

   He said he had not touched them, but a touch of red on the tongue he stuck out suggested otherwise. Ruffling Owen's hair, Papa told him to clean up and set the table.

   ‘When is the train?’ asked Owen, as he did almost every other day.

   ‘It was delayed, so they'll be an hour late’, said Papa, putting on an apron. There was a mischief in his eyes that radiated right through his rounded beard and caught Owen own cheeks.

   When he had washed up and then washed, sugared, and covered the strawberries, he said, ‘Papa, I'm going to start my first stage in a few weeks. Herr Gottlieb said I could when I asked him, and I want to help Gehrmeid with the pipes and the greenhouses.’

   ‘Is that so? Sturmpferd and Kellers's greenhouses are an important job. Do you think you're responsible enough?’

   ‘Yes, Papa, I remember to clean off my boots every time we go into the greenhouse and I never scratch under the masks when Gehrmeid takes samples. Gehrmeid says I would be good at it. He won't let me measure the leaves, he says it's too delicate, and Frau Kellers doesn't like it if I ask to help too much, but I know more about the plants than the eight-year-olds in the ag stage…’

   Papa uncovered a meat pie that had been waiting on the counter and put it in the Mikrowellemicrowave : Mikrowelle
   
   ; by the time Mama got home with Luc it would be hot and ready.

   An hour later, Owen's stomach was still warm from the freshly eaten portion of meat pie and his eyelids grew heavy in his cot. Mama and Papa's voices talked long into the night couching Owen's dreams in familiarity like a warm spring rain on a lake's gentle waves.

   ---

   {{A scene in which Owen asks his mother about her work, and she describes some part of it in the context of their future mission. If Owen is five now and he'll be fifteen-eighteen when they leave the solar system, that means that there may be only the barest idea of what is coming at this point. In fact, the community may have no current goal other than to try to live as sustainably and self-contained a life as possible.If they are more like the Mormons or the Adventists, then living on a new planet gives them a new lease on life in the sense that they can more easily reach the hundred-and-forty-four-thousand mark, at least for their planet. If they are more like the Jews, than they have to recognise that they are willingly abandoning the planet to which their heritage and inheritance are tied, the place on which Zion is to be built and the Messiah to be sent. There may be philosophical or spiritual arguments to suggest that whtever new planet they may find might not need a Messiah or benefit from the terrestrial rule of a YWHW-chosen and -inspired ruler. If they are more like the Bible Belt Protestants, than they can choose whatever interpretation of the “we are the new Isreal, God's chosen people”; follow our rules and you can be, too. They have the conceptual and mental lattitude to go anywhere and claim it as their God-given right. The Catholics, evangelicals[fn:123], the Orthodox, and the Anglicans would likely all be more willing to accept a world-view that does not take success or failure on hope, but rather as preördained fact; to go with prayer, a steadfast heart, and access to a confessor. The Muslims will have to decide how to handle the injunctions that require Earth-bound targets. How, for example, does a Muslim astronaut to the ISS go about making the five prayers at the appointed times during each 90-minute day, and how does (s)he make sure to be facing Mecca at that moment. It may perhaps be presumed that the Hajj would quite simply be abandoned, but might it also make sense to divide and take a part of the stone to each new colony, to give the Muslims of that world a central place to direct their prayers, and to anchor them in some tangible way to their origins. Buddhism in it's more original forms, along with Hinduism make little room for actual human life outside the Earth as much as they have cosmologies spanning thousands if not millions of centuries and may contain admit some form of non-terrestrial life[fn:124].
   
   }}

   ---

   MamaMama Larsson is a nuclear engineer; she works sometimes from home but usually she takes the train to the reactor test facility some ninety kilometres away. The expectation is to use several such reactors to provide power during the possibly several years of space travel getting to their destination and then to power and heat the first settlements.
   
   and Papa had to go to a meeting on Friday night, and Owen had begged to stay and watch his brother. Luc had been born only a year ago last month, but the precocious toddler's waddly walk was stronger every day. He held his brother's hand as they walked in circles around the room. Luc climbed the three-step ladder onto the bed Mama slept in and slid off into his brother's arms with a gleeful, gummy grinRemove ‘gleeful,’.
   
   .

   When the porch light clicked on, Owen set his brother in his chair that hung from a spring that Papa had screwed to the rafter in the middle of the house and heated the evening soup on the stove by the door.

   Owen looked over at Luc who chewed slobberously on his own hand, calmly. He was lucky to have such a calm brother.

   Out the half-shuttered window, he saw Frau Kellers door open. One of the message-runners was silhouetted in a rectangle of yellow-orange light. There was a flash of blue and then the runner made good her title, running towards the greenhouses.

   Owen stirred the near-boiling soup absentmindedly. The porch-light clicked back off and the stars began to show above the line of houses and garden plots. Frau Kellers's door was shut; Owen's eyes began to adjust. The runner's shadow raced past once again, this time headed towards away from the great hill.

   Owen was in his high alcove above Mama's bed when he heard Papa take off his shoes. Mama must have tasted the soup because she said that it was wonderful, and the she was glad it was still warm. She and Papa sat and talked at the table by the stove in low voices. He said something about still digesting in his head and she said that she was sure of it, but Owen could not tell what it was.

   Luc made a noise in his crib and Owen could just hear her footsteps as Mama walked over to her alcove and lay a hand on her sleeping second son. When Papa walked over and put his hand around her, Owen, too, was asleep.

   ---

   Mama stayed home for almost week this time. {{…working on her equations. …working on her {reference to previous discussion with Owen talking about nuclear technologies in simplified form}. …trying to get the simulation atoms to fuse in a controllable way.

   ---

2. Scotland

   The autumn months were Owen's favourite months. There was more work to be done for some of it, but when it was their turn, he, Papa, Mama, and Luc would all fill a backpack and take the train to Berlin and then another train from there. Last year they had gone to the mountains where he and Luc learned to ski. Luc learned almost as quickly as his older brother, which made Mama very proud; she told Owen he was a good teacher.

   This year, Owen was nine and he had spent every night practicing his English with Luc and Papa. They were going to Scotland.

   Luc got to carry his own bag this time, and he got a yellow balloon, too.

   ---

3. Pampa and Mahga Alavič

   Hao and Hugh AlavičPampa and Mahga: He was Lithuanian, she was Brazilian; neither of them lived to see the fruits of their labours achieved, but they did live to see their children and grandchildren follow in their footsteps (unfortunately for the worse of those they set out to “help”). My version will likely be something a little different, but I hope to do them justice. Perhaps a Finnish-Hungarian couple or Scots-Pakistani or Filipino-German.
   
   walked along the simple country lane, wrinkled hand in wrinkled hand. The long, slow slope wound its way along the hillside, turning back on itself here and there to stay in the early summer sun. Had you and I been standing at the top of the hill, we might have seen how Hugh walked as though there was but one thing in the world and how Hao took everything in. What Owen saw, reclining against the stunted oak at the top of the hill, was tufts of hair poking up just above the ridge like two hares. One moves forwards as the other turns slowly, attention crisply on its companions stride; then the other moves forwards in short slow hops, its companion turning this way and that — trembling slightly — as though to sniff at every flower along the path. Little rabbits, thought Owen, grow young hares.He is remembering a poem that his mother used to read to him:
   
   Little rabbits grow young hares, and give their mothers heart attacks
   When they give each other dares, to prove their mettle, earn their knacks:
   Tie the cows' and horses' tails, pour warm water on the cats,
   Drink straight from the dairy pails, knock the silver from the mats.
   
   Spoil the summer county fair, or give their Christmas presents back,
   Chew on bags to loose a share — of farmer's storage — from the shack.
   Eat the grocer's lettuce bare, they skin the tanner's pussycat,
   Raid the mayor's whiskey lair, then tell his mistress where it's at.
   
   'Till one day without a care, they play too close to Gorman Lac.
   Run my children, haste, beware: near the shed around the back
   Coonhound, dachsund pull at their, chain and muzzle 'till it snaps.
   Chase you clear to county Blaire, or cook you up for teatime snacks.
   
   — Galvin F. Forester
   
   

   Owen ran over to them when he saw the basket in Pampa's hand:First draft of this conversation:
   
   — Good marnin' Pampa, G'marnin' Magha. I can hold that for you.
   
   — Thank ye', Owen, dit Pampa, handing over the basket.
   
   — So, are ye comin' up 'ere fer a pi'nit? demanda-t-il.
   
   — Yes, lui réponda Hao, we come up here for picnic lunch. We bother you maybe? demanda-t-elle with an indulgent smile.
   
   — Not atall. I just woke up.
   
   — A nap, eh? dit Hugh in a convivial way. 'Ts a nice day ferrit.
   
   — Nae, I've been 'ere since Tuesday. We're playin' forts and I'm under seige.
   
   — You've nae been 'ome in two nights?
   
   — 'At's righ'! Slep' un'er the stars, drank the marnin' dew!
   
   

   ‘Good marnin' Pampa, G'marnin' Mahga! I can hold that for you.’

   ‘Thanks Owen’, said Hugh, handing over the basket.

   ‘So, are ye comin' up here fur a picnic?’

   ‘Yes’, smiled Hao, ‘we are come up here for picnic lunch. Maybe we bother you?’

   Her smile wrinkled her whole face in a way that felt like she was letting him in on a secret.

   ‘Nodadall. I just woke up.’

   ‘Early for a nap, eh?’ winked Hugh with his voice. ‘Well, it is a nice day for it.’

   ‘Naae, I've been here since Tuesday. Were playin' forts. They've got me under seige.’

   ‘'zat so? You're mum did say two nights you've not been haem.’

   Hao laughed despite herself. A cool laugh like a brook falling over mossy rocks. Owen felt a light chill despite the warm breeze as he walked the picnic basket over to a flat spot near the tree.

   ‘That's right. Slept right here under the stars. Drank the morning dew, too.’

   Hao — Owen had called her Mahga since he'd met her — looked off the hill over the town of Kirkskenning as her husband dragged over a sizable looking branch, tied a cushion to it, and helped her to sit down on.

part 10 :: Bravery

1. Over the edge.

   From the navigator's seat, the jump is a sudden rush, as though the laws of inertia simply ceased to hold true. From one side of the edgestation to the other, the Moonshot simply drifted, and then the world shifted. The edgestation abruptly fell away and so did the star — though it seemed lately like little more than one of the many stars in the sky, a little brighter perhapsThis idea needs introduced earlier, this is only a reminder that the Sun from the persective of Pluto is just a slightly brighter star than the others. If humans lived exclusively on Pluto, there would be those who denied that it was any closer than the others. In the context of this moment, the only important thing is that this one star turns into a point of light that stretches into a ray, nearly invisibly due to the direction of travel. Whatever other stars are between the point of departure and the final destination also form line segments that stretch and deform only slightly before immediately settling into points again, if only
   
   — that until now they had called sun.

   A slight vibration shook the hull from the outside in, and then there was a low rumble as the ship began to thrust in retrograde. And so began the first five months of negecksnegative acceleration, aka decceleration. These are the retro burns intended to slow the ship once the catapult shield[fn:132] had dissapated.
   
   burns.

   Srmck pulled on xrs jacket sleeves and tried not to bite xrs lip. hoping that the ship wouldn't be torn apart in the jump.

   ‘That's the solar sail deploying’, whispered Jxmc, furrowing his brow. He looked down at his younger sibling.

   ‘I know that sound. They've deployed the solar sail!’ xe said excitedly. ‘We've jumped!’

   It was almost too easy. The ship had hardly moved. If Jxmc hadn't been looking out the porthole at that exact moment, he wouldn't have believed they'd gone anywhere. There was no warning. And now it was too late.

   The $malkesh-colony-ship-name had just gained millions of millions of kilometres per second of Δv,

   ---

2. Youth

   ‘I scrubbed these three times already’, Luc whined.

   ‘In the past—’

   ‘Uh, fortnight, fortnight and a half.’

   ‘So you’re certain they’re in perfect condition?’

   ‘They were when I finished.’

   ‘Which was when?’

   Owen’s raised inflection suggested that he knew it had been over a week since Luc’s suit had been inspected.

   Not that they really needed to be inspected that often, since they remained stowed most of the time.

   ‘Where is the internal pressure regulator valve?’

   ‘Phhh, come on. Really?’

   Owen asked the question again in the same tone, one of polite but insistent need. This was akin to the quick recall training that Luc would normally begin next year, but Owen gave the questions as though he were a medic examining a completely foreign suit.

   ‘Dead centre, in big dark shiny blue. Righty-tighty—’

   ‘Five. Technically correct, but always speak from the perspective of the observer if you aren’t going to use the correct terms. Where is the—’

   ‘The Offal terms suck.’ Luc countered quietly.

   It was his own private victory that in the jump the Moonshot had finally left behind the, in his own terms, “inhumane oppression by the Bureaucratic Homogenisation Directive Establishment’s Official Standards of Communication”.

   That corrupt group of bureaucrats was the source of most of Luc’s problems. It was their fault Luc’s father had to move them to Scotland. Their fault that Luc’s mother hadn’t been able to follow. It was their fault when Owen’s papers were rejected by the university for not meeting national standards.

   “It’s their fault that we’re even in this mess”, he thought often recently, “we wouldn’t be stuck in this ’rramt ship on a one way journey to nowhere.”

   ‘Where is the temperature gauge’, repeated Owen.

   ‘There are two. The water temperature gauge is on my left arm, just under the elbow.’

   ‘Which is hard to see. Where’s the other one?’

3. Number One

   ‘Speak freely, Cameron.’

   ‘The soi-disant Goldilocks zone is a frickin' minefield, there's no way we can maœuvre near that asteroid belt, captain. Our best estimates suggest that even if there were planets there, they're gone now“… they're stardust now.”
   
   I don't like this. It's clever in a low-effort way, a perfect tagline for a trailer and a great way to cheapen a whole film. It would work well in a Star Wars novel, since the whole feel of the universe is slightly more advertising campaign/polished. I want my Rumple's Wrinkles to feel true to life, typos and mistyped commands and all. There are no (non-machine) hackers typing every command perfectly every time, for pages and pages.
   
   .’

   The exasperation in his voice was palpable through the fatigue that slowed his speech. ‘Harper— with all due respect’, he paused to look out the viewport over the ship's broad side, ‘we've been had.’

   ---

   Everyone's nerves were a little on edge as the heads of each department found their way to a strap or foot-hook on atrium the walls.

   Harper cleared his throat and the whole station seemed to shut up. The air recycler cycled just as he began to speak so he started again.

   ‘The system maps have been retrieved from the initial probes. They tend to confirm what we already know; this is going to be harder than we thought.’ Harper looked each of his officers in the face, turning slowly in the atrium space.

   ‘We prepared for planetfall in two years’, said @Moonshot-civ-admin-1. ‘What does this mean?’

   ‘It means we have our work cut out for us.‘ Harper glanced at @Moonshot-civ-admin-1 whose clenched jaw told a different story than his ready eye. ‘Cameron, your brief.’

   Cameron pushed off from his perch and hooked his feet under the bar in the centre of the atrium where Harper had been moments before.

   ‘The three outer planets are massive gas giants with a system of moons and faint rings. There may yet be a mid-sized rocky planet about .8 AU from @Malkesh-star. Verifying that is our immediate priority, since it seems that what might once have been the two habitable planets we were promised is now a colossal debris field and a set of trojans in highly eccentric orbits.’

   ---

   Harper made a mental note to talk with the civilian officers over the coming week. If they were going to survive, they couldn't lose hope. And that means keeping busy.

   Eleven months in a tin can you could do a morning jog around in a few minutes can get a little cramped.

   Until further notice, the colonists are still to plan for planetfall in approximately eighteen months. A more direct route to the asteroid belt and the possible planets behind the system's star would require more fuel to be used, reducing manœuvrability later on.

   ---

4. Arrival

   The Moonshot arrives in this pristine, untouched solar system. Over the next three months the ship performs several gravity-assisted manœuvres — slowing beyond what the solar sail can do — coming into an distant orbit around one of the three gaseous outer planets in this newly inhabited system.

   ---

   ‘Ugh, more pea-tea?’

   ‘Consider yourself lucky you're not a lander.’

   Landers had twice the PT of the rest of the civvies.There is a play on words here:
   
   PT, or physical training, is intended to keep humans in physical condition for eventual planetfall.
   
   pea-tea, or recycled water, is one of the two main sources of H₂0 on the ship. The fresh water reserve, which provides part of the radiation shielding for the vessel is the second.
   
   

5. Tragedy cares not

   ‘This is NOT a drill, please move to the nearest lifeboat and await instructions.’Would this better be phrased as might be in a military vessel, with more specificity, since although they are all technically civilians, they are all part of a well-trained, well-equipped team? No, I think not.
   
   

   ‘Another bloody drill.’ Harper mumbled ironically to himself. He stood up, grabbing the go bag that every member of the Moonshot's crew had packed and repacked eleven times during the trip so far.

   ‘If only.’

   Harper knew what do do. [—-y. Basically, he he set the es'f-dedxi'i'tribbit :'g….'.

   Harper knew what to do. He'd have to scuttle the ship, leaving the many families to move abov.”…*Inwz'y s bt,",boff th laiy..yy"

   …to fend for themselves in the life boats. They had trained for this. Theoretically. There weren't enough escape craft for everyone, though; and, in all but the most catastrophic situations, the safest place is to stay with the ship. A few areas were expected to be able to survive a hull breach, and the bridgeWhich, it has yet to be established, is quite near the centre of the colony ship, fore of the crew quarters. The ship operates mostly on inertial guidance with backup stellar guidance for error correction.
   
   is the strongest of these fortifications. To bad it wasn't the mess. No food makes for a cranky final few hours or days with a skeleton crew of twenty-five.I don't know if I can do so competently, but I'd like to continue using this style for at least several passages. This emulates rather well the idea of broken communication and fuzzy recordings. It was created when I tried to write this part while sleepy. Or rather the idea of a broken mind and fuzzy memory.
   
   

6. Time capsule

   Assuming that the real distance to the destination system is less than sixty light-years (my assumption is that it is around 5 ly), it may have been possible to send a time capsule just before they left with information and messages for their future selves. (Not so much Hari Seldon style advice as momentos and newsreels.) There may be continuing updates from that point forward, though reception may be difficult as message and background noise are near-indistinguishable.

   The idea being that every few years they would have slipped a bunch of food or equipment past the edgestation, autopiloted to find a long orbit and wait for the colonists. One of these so-called first-contact probes woul dhave been observing the system for the past ten or so years and should be able to give the colonists a pretty accurate idea of the orbits and relative distances of most star system objects.

Thread 3: Sgt-Hjörtur, owes a favour, visits asteroid

{ This is the summary for this section, Chapter 3. An earnest young investigator, @Sgt-Hjörtur (Norðdahlson Magnussonar) — whose specialty is in forensic auditing — was unable to close a recent case using legally gathered evidence. The months of work put into building the case would go to nothing. @Skien offered to bring some more evidence to light, legally. And that evidence was, though not enough to prosecute directly, enough to get some of those involved talking. Namely, @Gregory_Norman and @Brenda_Teibeck, who, upon release from initial interrogation, (each individually) began merger talks with NatTrust's parent company Interna, and then handed in their resignations. I ought to get a handle on what the crime is, then build backwards to the mystery.}

Anyone who has lived on Malkesh station more than a few weeks would know better than to stand near the cargo lifts when the exotic animals are unloaded. P.I. NorðdahlMagnusson

had not lived on Malkesh station for any length of time.

He'd been only the sixteenth person to suffer a similar fate in the twenty-year history of the station, and a Beware of Large Machines and Sharp Claws sign was added the following week in large block characters.Chinese ? Japanese ? Loätian ?

A pistol butt to the face and he's out —— not quite.It's not so easy to knock someone out like this, and in this case he's half sucumbed to the several dull pains that anæsthetises him to the world outside his head (which explains the blank look on his face), and half embroiled in the almost automatic reflex to audit the situation to find the story in the numbers.

@Sgt-Hjörtur is not a large man but the three men in front of him are. And the woman that's got him pinned against the wall — pistol butt under his chin – is no skinny bitch either, despite the spraypainted logo on the jacket hanging off her bony build.There are a lot of questions to be brought up here as well, see policing in my notes for more on the issues with a justice system in contexts involving time-spans of months or years (combined with the capibility for massive data gathering in the case of criminal investigation).

Something hits the side of his head, knocking him out of her grip. He bounces onto and then back off of the riveted floor like a sack of bone and potatoes would in point three gees.

Overwhelmed by the pain @Sgt-Hjörtur lets out a short cry and then slumps over. Blood collects in his right eyebrow where the blow hit him.

He is taken down several corridors and through a false wall in a suspiciously clean maintenance alcove.

‘What was he doing down there then, eh?’

‘Hell if I know, but you can't just go around knocking heads without checking them out first.’

‘I did check him out, an' he ain't much to look at. Don't got an eye-dee. An' when he took interest to one of the pallets labeled first-class — those is off limits, you said so yourself — that's when I saw that he was packing, so I kill'd his magboots and we brought him straight here.’This whole conversation will get garbled up some, since @Sgt-Hjörtur is not totally in control of his faculties. He's had some field training, but he's so far really been more of a desk jockey.

At this, a different voice spoke, in a dialect even harder for Hjörtur than the Malkeshi accent.

‘Wišt. Arrii', ge' am tu Glâdon an' weel ge' an iidi. Mean'iim ree'tšek ðu läags an' reepor' on šihpmn' staa'us.’

Wisht.

@Sgt-Hjörtur couldn't tell if it was a word or a sound that woke him. All he knew was that his head hurt and that there was a ringing in his ears.

He tried to feel his face. Nothing. He tried to open his eyes. Pitch black.

Then everything was orange and pink, and his eyes hurt, too. A line of blinding white formed at the bottom of his vision, and grew thicker as he tried again to open his eyes.

That he'd had a nasty blow to the head was now becoming painfully clear. So, too, were several other facts. He was restrained, there was no sensation in his left arm, and he was not alone.

Hjörtur looked about as best he could with his left arm tightly bound. The exposed conduits suggested a maintenance corridor, but he he could not read the Malkeshi symbols that covered the tubular walls walls.

‘Cann wee deespens wi' ðe biindings ða' old ye, saarjen’This is a long bastardised form of northern Irish accent that, while distinctive, has seen several hundred years of contact with a muddled Scots influence. Few on Malkesh station speak an English understandable to the modern ear. Those that do hold to an archaïc tradition that has its roots in the evangelical traditions of the Scottish Church.

A quick quick guide to the transcription follows, and then a translation that attempts to adhere to the origin wording where syntaxes differ from modern English.

Follows a transliteration into twenty-first century prescribed orthography:

<<<<<<<<< “<Can we dispense with the bindings that hold you, sergeant?>”

“<I'll not have you trying to harm mine if you try to flee.>”

‘Where am I?’

“<We can discuss civil-like once I've your word on that you'll won't harm mine if we unbind you. It's not Malkeshi custom to keep a man bound as don't need it, nor is there honour in holding one as hasn't submitted to it.>”

‘If I'd read the guidebook—’ Hjörtur muttered.

“<Tea, if you don't mind, James.>

“<We'll have those bindings off now, I think.>”

“<I'm told you were found near to the same lifts as was that colony auditor found dead two months ago. I gander from that information and the badge that you're here to look into the unfortunate accident.>”

>>>>>>>>>>

The voice came from his right, where he could not turn to see.

‘Iill no'ave ye triing 'a arm miine if ye trii te flee.’

‘Where am I?’

‘We can deescus sivilliike onse Iv yer word on ða' yull no'arm miine iv wee unbiindye. It'z no' Malceshi cus'om da ceep u maan bound az don' need i', nor iz ðer aaner in olding one az hazn- submi'ed to i'.’

‘If I'd read the guidebook—’ Hjörtur muttered.

‘Tee, if ye don- miind, Džaamz.’

There was a sound like a liquid being poured, then a shape came into view, half gliding, half bouncing. The voice followed as though it belonged to this half-emaciated creature.

Unmistakably human — long arms and a thin face accentuated by the draping clothes that hung off an ample torso — the voice continued, and the ringing in Hjörtur's ears made him shut his eyes.

‘Weel ave ðoz biindingz af naou, Ii þink.’

The creatures long fingers began to work at the bindings as it spoke.

‘Iim 'old yuu wer faound neer 'a ðe saam lifs az wez ða' calonee audi'er faound ded ßuu monþs agou. Ii gander frum ða' informaašun and ðe badž ðe' yeer eer 'e luk indu ðee unforčuna' acsiden'.’

Half right. The contorted smile that wound along the speakers face suggested that there was a joy in talking about it. Was it knowledge that raised those long eyebrows? Suspicion? What did this person know that warranted such zeal. The dull blue eyes seemed preöccupied with some thought or other; but the fingers continued their course, loosing the lashing that had bound Hjörtur's arm to the table.

He sat up—

—and ended up on the floor. Rather, on another floor.

He'd misjudged his initial position. He hadn't been laying on a table, but laid up against an angled protrusion of the wall. What had seemed the edge of a table had been a door, not slid by extruded from its opening.

Now that he sat facing the other way and was no longer tied, he could see that the corridor continued to either side curving slightly as it went in the direction that felt like down. The tubular ceiling was met by a low angled wall on either side, and which in turn met a metre-wide walkway. The “door” on which Hjörtur had awoken was now retreating towards the open slot in the angled floor opposite where Hjörtur's ill-conceived movement had landed him.

The pale, bearded person who stood now on the walkway, turned and addressed Hjörtur again.

‘Iim Gorman, doc'or and fizišun wen i' iz calld for. Iiv seen 'uu ðee bump on yer ed. Nas'ee noc i' wuz tuu.’

Hjörtur looked about him.

Afterward

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