Hello dearest readers, I'm just adding a note here to say that I'm taking a bit of a winter vacation. I'll be back in the new year with more Critical Future's stories, but in the mean time, visit tychoish.com and be well. -- tycho garen

Fresh Eyes, #2

A Uncategorized story, by tycho garen
on 30th September 2008. (commentary)

Welcome to the 8th installment of the ongoing Station Keeping story. This installment will air in two parts. The first first part was entitled “Working Overtime,” and the second part is called “Evening Stroll,” and appears below. Thanks for reading.

Evening Stroll

Josh always imagined that the common spaces on the station would be more occupied then they were. Even though the station was mostly completed, it would still be a while before there was any regular traffic simply because of the way space travel worked. Josh tried to be more optimistic, but at the moment the station looked mighty dreary. “How do you are you liking this posting?” Josh asked when they stepped out of the lift.

“Oh, it’s alright. I’m a bit of a perfectionist with these computers,” she paused for a moment and looked at her left arm, on which, Josh realized, Julia was caring a mini-computer terminal. “So it’s nice to be able to organize a system basically from the get go. And besides all this gear is pretty high-tech–for the rim worlds–so that’s a plus.”

“Yeah, I felt the same about the construction management when I came aboard, but it kind of lost it’s glean after a while.”

“How long were you out here before the rest of us got here?”

“Few years, three and a half I think. I was on assignment a few worlds over, and being young and unattached, they moved me out here, because apparently I was the closest. Go figure.”

“And here you are. Spend a lot of time on the rim, then?”

“A little. I grew up core-side, but figured there was more to see. And Hanm has really grown on me.” Josh said.

“I grew up on ships, moving about every so often, we saw a lot of rim worlds, I can’t say they did much for me. Is Hanm really that special?”

“Particularly with this station, you bet. Most important rim world, the way I figure it.” Josh was almost baffled that she didn’t know Hanm.

“Everything’s so far apart, I totally don’t buy what the news people are saying about the Hanmists. The league’ll hold.”

“You know as well as anyone that core and rim are all relative terms, star-density is about the same, we just got to the ‘core’ first.”

“–that’s what I meant.” she cut him off.

“How familiar are you with the Hanmists, anyway?” Josh continued.

“Not much, just what I grazed in the reports.” she said, sounding a bit embarrassed. Hanm Centre was just a job for her, she was so used to moving around almost constantly that she had grown a thick skin for “settling in.”

“Look harder,” Josh said, stopping to turn to Julia “See what’s on the nets, I the Commander would like anything he can get on the subject”

“Do you think it’s a threat? Otherwise I don’t see the harm in letting people talk about whatever they want, didn’t the league learn that lesson the hard way a few centuries ago.” Julia spoke of the past as if it were only a few months ago, which it might not have been far off, Josh realized. He never checked to see when her objective birthday was: relativity screwed things up so bad. It gave him a headache, and he convinced himself that it didn’t really matter.

“I don’t know that I’d say ‘threat,’ but it’s worth keeping an eye on, and whatever happens this place,” he said, tapping his foot gently for emphasis, “is going to care.”

“I’ll say.”

“And what happens there,” Josh pointed to the mini-terminal screen strapped to her forearm, “is just as important as what happens out here.”

“You mean in ‘reality‘?” she said with mock amazement and horror. They laughed.

“Yeah,” he took a deep breath, “but, just one officer to another: keep your eyes open. Someone here needs to know what’s going on,” he pleaded.

“The nets are pretty cool, I’ll give myself–and them–that, but they’re not that good.” She said, hoping that she hadn’t overcommitted herself.

“It’s something. Anyway, lets keep walking, it’s a big station after all.”

permalink • • zero comments
tagged: •

Zero Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment