Post 49
You wake up in a rush. Something has disturbed you, besides the usual digestion noises that Shori has around this time of night. You don’t know what she eats, but there seems to be a lot of it. There’s a new noise this time. Something almost like gasping. For a moment, you think it’s just the pleural friction of Shori’s passive gas exchange system, but it’s not. It’s too irregular. You press your ear up to the smooth muscle membrane separating your room from Hoshi’s.
He’s talking in his sleep. Or maybe crying. You can’t hear. “Chi-chan!” he shouts out suddenly. “Chiyoko!” There’s sudden quiet. You can hear him get up and the change in air pressure that means he’s opened one of the membranes to head out into the rest of the ship.
You settle back to sleep.
Your cesium-atom clock wakes you up for regular daylight duty cycle and you pull on the soft clothes Hoshi gave you. They are a little stained now, with grease and solder and slightly singed from your experiments in the parts bay, but still perfectly serviceable. You actually like them better this way. They feel more like yours.
You avoid the control room and Hoshi. You’re not hungry and never eat breakfast anyway and make your way to the parts room. He still makes you uncomfortable and you’re looking forward to getting back to work.
The room is under control now. You’ve managed to sort and organize a plan for some of the useful parts, but you’re still not exactly sure what you’re supposed to be doing. An ion drive isn’t terribly complicated, but you don’t know how to fit it to Shori’s natural propulsion systems or how to run fuel lines in a living being. You can build the tracking software into Shori’s neural matrix, but you don’t know what you are supposed to be tracking or how you are supposed to link it to the physical world. It feels overwhelming and distressingly organic, so you ignore it again today and just focus on cataloguing parts. It’s soothing to sit in the quiet with the machines and lose yourself in the comforting familiarity of specification research.
The door-membrane opens and Hoshi steps through, searching for you in the towers of crap. You’re tucked away in a corner and can watch him before he sees you. He’s holding a cup of nutritional supplement and you unconsciously gag. Your stomach rumbles and you realize you should probably eat.
“Burke?” he calls out finally, poking his head around bins of junk. “Are you in here?”
“Yes,” you say, abandoning your surveillance and coming out to greet him.
He hands you the mug. “How’s it going?”
“Shitty. Do you have any equipment that hasn’t been blasted, melted, or that could possibly date from this century?”
He seems amused by your bad humor and just shrugs. “Tough life, pet. I have to scavenge which doesn’t give us a lot of choice. Is there anything useful there?”
“Yes,” you mutter. “Sort of. But I need stuff. Do you have any cash for this upgrade?”
“Cash?” He seems surprised by the question. “Why on earth would we need cash?”
“You know, to pay for stuff.”
He throws his head back to laugh in genuine delight. “No, no, my dear. I don’t have any cash.” He continues to chuckle as he heads back towards the door and presumably the control room. “Cash,” he whispers to himself. “As if I was going to buy something. What a riot.”
“How are you going to get the other equipment then?” you ask, following him. “I mean, I’m good, but there’s just no way—”
“Make a list, pet. And we’ll find a nice place to set down.” He flashes a very white smile at you. “Shori needs a proper meal anyway.”
“What does she eat?” you ask, a little hesitantly.
“You don’t want to know,” he answers.
You agree and keep your mouth shut. Organics are disgusting.
There’s a high-pitched whine as the docking port connects to Shori and the skeletal muscles around the bay shiver in reaction. A different color fluid that usual floods the area behind the translucent cartilage that keeps Shori’s insides from getting all over you. It’s disgusting and you quickly focus on the now open corridor leading into the new space station.
Bongani Station smells like burning electricals and reminds you of a beehive, only a grease-covered, poor biped hive. You let Hoshi go first into the short corridor to set foot on the alien ground and try to make it seem casual. He has your number though and gives you a sweet smile as he shoves you out in front of him instead.
“There you go, Burke. Out and about. You need to make some friends anyway.”
The shove lands you in front of a giant man-thing with a face pockmarked by weapon scars. You take a couple shuffling steps back, but the big man doesn’t really notice you. It’s been a while since you’ve been around this many people and it takes you a moment to try to adapt your senses to the instant social anxiety and physical fear alarms triggering in your subconscious. Young, dangerous looking males of many different species all seem to be around you. There’s a group playing a gambling game involving dice in a cup and playing cards to one side. Another throng surrounding a handheld electronics vendor. Constant, weird animal noises seem to come from nowhere in particular and merge with the chaotic scents of the city.
You stumble a little and realize that Hoshi has left you to start making his way through the crowds. You fumble after him with a little jolt of electric abandonment. You may not like him very much, but he is familiar.
As you pass through the crowd, a small-dark haired female catches your eye. She’s young and her eyes glow with that electric blue fever you’re very acquainted with. You swallow hard and glance after Hoshi. He’s far ahead at this point and you feel a driving need to get your brain back. You’re tired of the thick, painful process of thinking that’s getting worse by the day and afraid of the shakes and the delirium that is starting. Her eyes meet yours through the mass of organics and you force your way over to her.
You don’t know how to begin, but you reach out to touch her arm and she shrinks back. “I need—”
She shakes her head and pulls you into what could be a cargo loading storehouse or an old merchant house. Through the thick fog that is your thought process you can hear a slow tick-tock of an old-fashioned mechanical clock, though the time is off. A moment of syncope makes the world tilt in a stomach churning lurch and you have to blink to clear your eyes.
The woman is now joined by a man. Both of them are looking at you. You pull out a pocket grav compensator that you’d swiped from Hoshi and offer it to them. You’d managed to fix it this morning. “Snow.”
The girl and the man look at each other and the man pulls out an electric blue vial from one of his pockets. You close your eyes in relief as he hands it to you. You can almost taste the garden of sensation of information waiting for you in the blue liquid. You crack the top and delicately dab a little of the liquid on your finger before placing it under your tongue. There’s a star-burst of light in your mind and you shiver in delight. The fog is gone. Suddenly, you can think. Everything is clear. The man nods and you duck your head, cradling the vial in the deepest reach of your coat. Or, rather, Hoshi’s coat. You had to roll the sleeves up.
You slip back out into the Station crowd, trying to imagine where Hoshi would have gone. You can’t remember if he told you or if you listened. Obviously not. You find a Station map instead and head toward the market. Maybe you can at least find some better parts there and maybe trade some of the other restored junk you’d found in Hoshi’s stash. Your pockets are heavy with trinkets and you’re carrying a backpack with some of the larger pieces.
You shift the pack more comfortably on your back and head out, trying to ignore the feeling of eyes on you as just a side effect of the Snow.