Okay, guys, tear it up. I need a little critique'n thrown at me here to get me fired up about finishing this WIP.
What you need to know to read this: The main character is the last survivor on a massive colony ship headed for a distant solar system. He spends quite a bit of time keeping this giant craft hurtling along at just under the speed of light, and thinks a lot about ending his misery through suicide (but, you know, there is always just one more thing to get done first!). The ship is kind of shaped like a giant cylinder that spins to simulate gravity. The story goes back and forth between the present (post-ship-wide apocalypse) and the past when everything was hunky-dory on their little utopian voyage.
He knows that he is going to have to do an extravehicular trip in a couple days to work on the exterior of the ship (where... passengers are still floating). This wears on him a bit even if he doesn't tell himself that directly.
No mercy, please.
__________________________________________
Adam had spent most of the past week pumping water off the glass in the greenhouse band of the ship and into the reservoir system, and now he was taking the opportunity to gather some fresh fruits and vegetables while he was down there.
He still felt dizzy whenever he came down to the greenhouse band. He had spent the majority of his life onboard the ship, and had to climb down to that level several times a week for maintenance or to collect food for himself, but he could never make himself used to the sensation of looking down beneath his feet and seeing the endless nothingness of space. It was better in some parts of the band where catwalks ran above the glass closer to the ceiling, but traversing most locations forced him to walk directly across the transparent material that formed the exterior of the ship.
Some guys used to do this by choice, he thought as he filled a hand cart with vegetables from the hanging netting of suspended hydroponic plants. They used to come down here and run across the glass because of the increased force of artificial gravity down here further from the hub. And then the Aggies of course, they couldn’t get enough of this place. Some of them used to like to sleep down here against the glass.
He looked down past his feet at the stars beyond and laughed at himself, I walk around this ship all day telling myself that I’d rather be dead, actually planning how to do it, and yet I get scared of heights down here.
He rolled his cart past a section of wheat without stopping on the way to the orchard to pick some apples. God, now that was a pain in the ass, when I tried to mill wheat. Much better to just live on the ship’s stores of flour. Maybe if I land on the other end and live to be a hundred I’ll run out and have to figure out how to do it myself.
I still wonder how much it hurts, he reminisced as he picked some of the more ripe apples for his cart. I’ve read all about the ebulism, and the boiling blood and all that, but how much are you really conscious for? The stuff I’ve read says that you’ll swell up to twice your normal size, but I’ve never seen any of that.
There’s usually a little blood floating around the nose and mouth. The grim thoughts mixed easily with the mundane task of pruning a couple of branches back and clearing some overgrown vines out of the area. It’s not like the guys who wrote the stuff on the net ever had the chance to toss a couple people out of an airlock and see what happens. I’m the only one who’s seen that.
Maybe I should write my findings down for posterity: ‘Men don’t explode in space, but they still don’t look happy.’ He laughed out loud as he loaded his cart on a lift to take him back to the fishbowl.
Back in the Captain’s quarters he kept staring at the same message on his datapad while he ate his dinner. The message that had been there this morning before he had gone down to the greenhouse band and stood staring into nothing. There was a structural warning, and welding would have to be done. Nothing out of the ordinary there, except that the welding needed to be done on the outside of the Eden 3.
It’s on the hub, so it’s not like I can be thrown out into deep space. Outside the cylinder, that’s where it’s dangerous, not inside by the hub. He thought of what was out there in the open space near the hub. Most of them had drifted away to settle against the glass on the inside of the cylinder – the glass ceiling of the fishbowl – but some still floated right by the hub.
It will be like seeing old friends. Besides, if they can stay there for all these years without getting lost, then I’m probably pretty safe on just one little EVA. Still, I wonder what it would be like to drift away. In a suit; not like the others of course. I could just push off rearward and drift behind the ship. I’d be moving, what, like 290,000km per second minus whatever speed I pushed off from the ship. The ship would be doing that, I’d be trailing behind it at a pokey 289,999km per second or something.
He looked out at the stars slowly moving across the clear wall of the Captain’s cabin, infinitely less threatening to him when viewed through a window horizontally than right beneath his feet. I wonder what kind of gravitational pull I’d have out there. The ship is pulling something like a star as it moves through at this speed, I’d be what, like a planet? This stuff is mind-boggling. Like Dr. Martinez’s student who claimed he was traveling through time by driving as fast as he could from bow to stern on a bicycle through the fishbowl.
Medicine made so much more sense to me. He chewed his salad thoughtfully. Still, it would be nice to see the Eden 3 shrink into the distance and away ahead of me as I lived on for a day or two on the air in the suit. There’s something comforting about the idea that I’d be away from this ship, but would still make it to Octans 321B on the far end. Even if I did hit it with enough force to… what?... to destroy the planet? To knock it off course? To create a crater large enough to kill any life already down there? If I have the mass of a planet then what the hell happens when my body gets there?
He brought up the specs for the EVA suits on his pad, looking for the air capacity. No, wait, I’ve got this wrong. I’d miss the planet entirely because the route is calculated for the Eden 3 to slow down before it gets there. Mild disappointment settled in as he realized that in his scheme, when the ship slowed down he would catch back up to it. No escaping that way. He shut off his pad and put it on its charger.
I’ll do the EVA tomorrow, get the welds in place, and then find another way to end it.
What you need to know to read this: The main character is the last survivor on a massive colony ship headed for a distant solar system. He spends quite a bit of time keeping this giant craft hurtling along at just under the speed of light, and thinks a lot about ending his misery through suicide (but, you know, there is always just one more thing to get done first!). The ship is kind of shaped like a giant cylinder that spins to simulate gravity. The story goes back and forth between the present (post-ship-wide apocalypse) and the past when everything was hunky-dory on their little utopian voyage.
He knows that he is going to have to do an extravehicular trip in a couple days to work on the exterior of the ship (where... passengers are still floating). This wears on him a bit even if he doesn't tell himself that directly.
No mercy, please.
__________________________________________
Adam had spent most of the past week pumping water off the glass in the greenhouse band of the ship and into the reservoir system, and now he was taking the opportunity to gather some fresh fruits and vegetables while he was down there.
He still felt dizzy whenever he came down to the greenhouse band. He had spent the majority of his life onboard the ship, and had to climb down to that level several times a week for maintenance or to collect food for himself, but he could never make himself used to the sensation of looking down beneath his feet and seeing the endless nothingness of space. It was better in some parts of the band where catwalks ran above the glass closer to the ceiling, but traversing most locations forced him to walk directly across the transparent material that formed the exterior of the ship.
Some guys used to do this by choice, he thought as he filled a hand cart with vegetables from the hanging netting of suspended hydroponic plants. They used to come down here and run across the glass because of the increased force of artificial gravity down here further from the hub. And then the Aggies of course, they couldn’t get enough of this place. Some of them used to like to sleep down here against the glass.
He looked down past his feet at the stars beyond and laughed at himself, I walk around this ship all day telling myself that I’d rather be dead, actually planning how to do it, and yet I get scared of heights down here.
He rolled his cart past a section of wheat without stopping on the way to the orchard to pick some apples. God, now that was a pain in the ass, when I tried to mill wheat. Much better to just live on the ship’s stores of flour. Maybe if I land on the other end and live to be a hundred I’ll run out and have to figure out how to do it myself.
I still wonder how much it hurts, he reminisced as he picked some of the more ripe apples for his cart. I’ve read all about the ebulism, and the boiling blood and all that, but how much are you really conscious for? The stuff I’ve read says that you’ll swell up to twice your normal size, but I’ve never seen any of that.
There’s usually a little blood floating around the nose and mouth. The grim thoughts mixed easily with the mundane task of pruning a couple of branches back and clearing some overgrown vines out of the area. It’s not like the guys who wrote the stuff on the net ever had the chance to toss a couple people out of an airlock and see what happens. I’m the only one who’s seen that.
Maybe I should write my findings down for posterity: ‘Men don’t explode in space, but they still don’t look happy.’ He laughed out loud as he loaded his cart on a lift to take him back to the fishbowl.
Back in the Captain’s quarters he kept staring at the same message on his datapad while he ate his dinner. The message that had been there this morning before he had gone down to the greenhouse band and stood staring into nothing. There was a structural warning, and welding would have to be done. Nothing out of the ordinary there, except that the welding needed to be done on the outside of the Eden 3.
It’s on the hub, so it’s not like I can be thrown out into deep space. Outside the cylinder, that’s where it’s dangerous, not inside by the hub. He thought of what was out there in the open space near the hub. Most of them had drifted away to settle against the glass on the inside of the cylinder – the glass ceiling of the fishbowl – but some still floated right by the hub.
It will be like seeing old friends. Besides, if they can stay there for all these years without getting lost, then I’m probably pretty safe on just one little EVA. Still, I wonder what it would be like to drift away. In a suit; not like the others of course. I could just push off rearward and drift behind the ship. I’d be moving, what, like 290,000km per second minus whatever speed I pushed off from the ship. The ship would be doing that, I’d be trailing behind it at a pokey 289,999km per second or something.
He looked out at the stars slowly moving across the clear wall of the Captain’s cabin, infinitely less threatening to him when viewed through a window horizontally than right beneath his feet. I wonder what kind of gravitational pull I’d have out there. The ship is pulling something like a star as it moves through at this speed, I’d be what, like a planet? This stuff is mind-boggling. Like Dr. Martinez’s student who claimed he was traveling through time by driving as fast as he could from bow to stern on a bicycle through the fishbowl.
Medicine made so much more sense to me. He chewed his salad thoughtfully. Still, it would be nice to see the Eden 3 shrink into the distance and away ahead of me as I lived on for a day or two on the air in the suit. There’s something comforting about the idea that I’d be away from this ship, but would still make it to Octans 321B on the far end. Even if I did hit it with enough force to… what?... to destroy the planet? To knock it off course? To create a crater large enough to kill any life already down there? If I have the mass of a planet then what the hell happens when my body gets there?
He brought up the specs for the EVA suits on his pad, looking for the air capacity. No, wait, I’ve got this wrong. I’d miss the planet entirely because the route is calculated for the Eden 3 to slow down before it gets there. Mild disappointment settled in as he realized that in his scheme, when the ship slowed down he would catch back up to it. No escaping that way. He shut off his pad and put it on its charger.
I’ll do the EVA tomorrow, get the welds in place, and then find another way to end it.
