the solar windmill - part one

[wytchcroft]

The Solar Windmill.

One:

Officially it was New Year, but she was never much one for calendars and it wasn't the raucous sing-along crackling over the intercom that woke her nor was it the space shuttles alarm set to chime the celebratory hour.

No, 00hrs and Eva Loka was woken from a cramped sleep in her bunk by the sound of sails.

She blurred into wakefulness from a place where memory met imagination, dreams... maybe. Ripples on the water and the wide lake dancing with a thousands tiny points of rain, An old woman pulling the tiller of a boat, the sails restless in the breeze, the waft and creak of the sails.

Sails.; A different sound from further off, the slow trundle of the windmill, its own sails moving through the rain spattered gloom.

And the old woman crooning in a language Eva could barely recognise anymore - and Eva herself, a child's chubby hand and an unexpected smile.

And awake.

She eased herself from the bunk. 

There was a large bottle fastened to the chair near the bunk.  She unlatched it and, under the light, admired the genuine looking glass of deep smoky blue.

Then holding it firmly in her right hand she went to throw it out the airlock.

…………………….

 

It was an old tradition of course; messages in bottles. Adventures and secrets or just wild hellos written down and flung into the loam, into the Sea...

And romantics might think of space the same way.

They put ships in bottles too, or used to, but that would create something of a paradox - how in hell could she fling the bottle out if the ship was in the bottle?

Mathematically it could probably be done - an Escher reality, dimensions flipped inside out at just the right point...

She hefted the bottle in her right hand as the airlock door hissed open.

"Eva, are you drunk?" a voice asked.

What would the stars make of such an oblique communication, a glass relic spinning slowly onward to nowhere... what would it signify?

Pathetic fallacy, well, obviously so - but still, there was some sort of sense, something almost ritualistic in this, as they approached their destination, that great abandoned hulk...

If there was a meaning to be read from THAT (as many insisted there was) and from her actions, her mission of repair, then surely this dark glass set tumbling was punctuation, a comma maybe, or an emoticon?

Perhaps not, coming from her this small scene was more like a parody and most of the discs in the bottle were blank, so much for her log, so much for the journey.

"What?" she asked, as her arm rose and her hand extended.

"I said are you drunk?" a tongue was clicking over the shuttle intercom. "What I meant was - Are you nuts?!?!?"

And here was she thinking – what, that this was ‘fitting in’? She would never understand people. Oh well.

She let her arm fall back.

“What do you want Leb?” It was her turn with the questions.

Lebedev was making squeaking noises over the com, setting her teeth on edge. Oh. Right. The mice.

Sigh.

Pets, well that was a responsibility but who didn’t love pets, they were practically de rigueur - good for morale. And on the boat Mickey Mouse and Microgauss had proved very effective in their role of light relief.

“You know how it is, they wanna see the mice.”

“Those fucking mice, Jesus it’s just so tacky, Mood Mice, I – no, OK so they’re insanely cute I’ll give you that but… c’mon, I did the zombie grinning already with Landis.”

“Landis? Don’t you mean…” The build up had become a real in-joke to the boys now, cue fanfare; “America’s next Astronaut?”

“Whatever, look – the point, I’m done OK? Johnson can go make nice with the mice.”

“Now who’s being cute? See? That’s why you’re such a natural on camera – the wit, the razor wit.”

“And a major lack of social skills.”

“Let’s keep that between ourselves, yeah? Just don’t insult the funders that would not be smart.”

“As if I” –

“Or the mice.”

“I love my mice.”

“Well OK then. Get to it – let’s get their show on the road so we can…” he scratched his brow, “ah… no, I got nothing.”

“Your words Leb, your words.”  But she’d raised a weary hand in any case. "Alright already," she gave up, "but next time I’m the one talking Doppler shift and sail lightness and you're the one talking fucking mood mice."

"Yes, I have a love for abandoned places." Leb mocked her dour tones.

Her retort was short and sharp - but she was already in the side compartment, the mice lounge as liked to call it. As usual when she entered the mice looked curiously up at her from their luxury abode and its soft straw and the silky hair on the pair of them turned a deep chilly blue.

"Right guys, sure, very funny."

………………..

She was still scowling some considerable time later, well after the interview was over - and when the shuttle departed she didn’t stop to see it off, her helmet mounted lamps were on and slipping through the maintenance hatch she was in.

For Eva, the Cardenal was already old news.

…………………

Inside.

She rested for a moment to check her focus. She was sharp, so OK. The sound of her pulse and the hiss of her breathing were mingled in her ears with the almost subliminal commentary of the suits recorder detailing pressure, heart rate and Oxygen to Co2 balance.

She toggled the map panel on her sleeve and it lit the airlock briefly as it came on.   Se looked down a it was a swift and deliberately neutral gaze – just as she had when seeing he great windmill floating out there in the aether, its wide sails folded had been catching the sunlight anyway, a huge piece of glinting flotsam, it would have been too easy to be beguiled by the superficial beauty of the thing – and beauty was not what Eva was about.

No, it was something altogether more abstract.

But whatever - and that was for others to wonder about - she was ready; twisting the slow manual wheel she opened the inner doors and stepped through.

………………………………………
 

At first she thought the gravity had malfunctioned.

Easing her way forward bootstep by bootstep, she felt heavy, her body suddenly an extraneous weight, cumbersome.

But it wasn't the gravity it was the whole clean, metallic place.

Here where her reflections staggered with her.

Dwarfed by the architecture, her body, her curves, her fleshly roundness became crude fat, she moved as if made of dough.

Here in this shining hard edged place she was rendered ugly.

Bad enough already to be feeling feverish with the Nanos wriggling in her bloodstream, they always made her feel that way, but it seemed ridiculous to her, these thoughts, sensations slurping along - she was an engineer dammit - hold onto that, hold onto that.

An engineer and a good one; old-skool, for real – academic, educated and trained, not simply handed a mission and a bunch of organic software.

Rare in this day and age, most of her brain was still her own. And her mind was too; no/one else would have considered fixing up this derelict folly, a solar windmill long forgotten. It had taken a lot of persuasion, argument, bribery and sheer bloody mindedness to get the scheme floated, not to mention the damn mice and ferrying would-be game show astronauts around.

It was undermining, and where there should have been a sense of achievement there was just embarrassment. It made her feel ridiculous.

But, she wondered, this glittering museum was that always how it had been, the crews through the years feeling ridiculous in their turn? Things lie abandoned for a reason after all.

Well, maybe.

 

I'm breathing just fine.

That was true, despite the feeling of labour, her visor was unfogged, her ears heard only the insistent air pump and below it her breath, she wasn't gasping or ragged. She was moving with a purpose after all.

She was moving with a purpose all the same.

 

There was a series of inter-locks and she navigated them slowly, twisting around as the size shape and direction shifted, adding to the disorientation.

She knew she was heading upwards - as much as that could be so defined.

She was heading up the central shaft towards the core and then, after, on to the control room.

Pausing before a wall mounted unit she patched her com’ and bio into it with a slither of flexi skin, stretching the membrane, like a fingerprint across the scanner.

"Connected" said an electronic voice, "feed upload affirmed; status stable."

"I want that on a T-shirt," she said to herself - but out loud unfortunately.

"Error - indeterminate command," the other voice snapped back. "Try again or Cancel?"

She ignored that, except for an eye-roll which, of course, could not be seen.

"Atmosphere," she commanded.

"Please state designated areas for atmospheric renewal."

She glanced at the map dancing beneath her on her sleeve.

"Hub one, Core central, Control."

She wanted rid of her helmet as soon as possible but airing up the shaft and its branches would be simply wasteful, at least until there was real power being generated, until she had the big wheel turning again.

...........

Exiting into the core anti-chambers she was taken by surprise at the sudden signs of human interaction, human life and memory. There were pictures, photographs and disc-ims running randomly along the walls and thin decorative paper-chains.

Why here of all places?

And the airlessness had contained them well, some of the photographs were no doubt ancient but for the first time the place actually felt LESS of a mausoleum.

There was an interrupted intimacy here, among the detritus, among the bricolage of so many lives, she felt almost embarrassed.

So many faces and varied in period, age, location - but the faces held the same expressions.

That waving smile, she knew it well, somewhere back on the transport was a nap-sack with a canvas wallet containing just the same kind of smiles, the kind that people give to a camera held by someone close and moving away.

She knew the walls would activate as she moved by them, gritted her teeth and put her feet down firm as the images leapt into life, as the hands and smiles flickered and a gaggle of voices hit her like spray, people splashing across her as she moved through the room sending holograms rippling.

She almost wiped her visor.

………………………………………….

Hunching down into the cramped duct tunnel, inching her way upwards using the guide ladder as a rail, back into the lurid LED glow, it was all a relief. After the grunge of the core, the sterility of the access tubing was welcome, she needed blankness, a screen to help her focus, not the claustrophobic distraction of the Core and its messy memorabilia.

She paused to open a small metal box bolted to the shaft. There was a pumping handle inside fashioned into a grip and painted a typically overstated red. She depressed the guard and worked the handle several times, it was in good order and she very quickly noticed an increase in the ambient lighting as reserve power was generated and re-routed to her location.

It was going to make life much easier that the station had kept a good store of power and that the various generating systems were still functioning.

She might be really indulgent on the next level and try the lift.

………………………………………….

Twisting her way up by scrabbling at the sheer metal duct Eva moved uneasily, feeling like a stray piece of grit in an archaic toy kaleidoscope.

No, she shook herself mentally, made herself reconsider - scratch that, she was... yes, like a random atom in a collider.

Around and around, what am I generating, she wondered, energy, it could be calculated maybe, the hidden source for the solar sails, she was both accelerant and propellant.

Her limbs gradually loosening pushed now at the smooth metal containing her and she was moving more assuredly. They should have thought of this, the human power, the kinetic force that could have been harnessed...


end of part one.

………………………………………….

thanks to Lacey for original insp. Yu for early encouragement and everyone that kindly commented on the earlier fragments.

and Bean for musings.

next chapter;
abandoned places, abandoned people, breaking into the past, the chemical facility on Mars etc.

Comments

[i-am-nyman.livejournal.com]

mmm, very good!

the isolationsism Eva feels while walking in the anti-chambers and regarding the stuff left from previous missions(?) is great. i mean, its like built on top of the isolation she must feel living in space. Here she is, rummaging through the personal affects of other people, and she feels shut out from their lives too. i dunno, just a tone i picked up and enjoyed.

looking forward to more!

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

grazie and yahtzee and much appreciated! :))

if the story works - by the time it's done - then what you mentioned about Eva, well, that should be the key...

Cheers! :)

[i-am-nyman.livejournal.com]

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/idiom_shortage_leaves_nation_all

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

Busted! LMFAO! :))

[sparklepony.livejournal.com]

Hi. I'm a friend of Mike's (i_am_nyman), and he showed me this story of yours. Just thought I'd leave you a comment to let you know I liked part 1! The mood it left me with was similar to the mood I feel every time I read "The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin -- one of my favorite sci fi stories. That's a good thing, I promise. You definitely know how to write sci fi. :)

hey :))

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

well that's kind of him and mighty generous of you! cheers! :))

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

You have fun icons, and are a good writer. I believe I must add you to my reading list... it's a moral imperative.

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

mmmmmmmm sweeet flattery - bring it on! :)))

*is startled* you want me to add you back??

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

I would never presume to tell another what they should or should not do with their reading list. If you find my entries interesting, by all means, feel free. If you don't, don't!

If you like fantasy, may I mention delicateart?

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

mention away! always interested in a little art.

well, i took a swift look and - now we're friends.

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

I am pleased! I warn that I do on occasion tend to wax dour, but it passes. It does pass.

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

waxing'll do that to anyone! LOL!

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

literature even! yep - them delicateart entries look right up my street*.


*beware Limey language alert!

[memeworrywort.livejournal.com]

Eva. I'm sorry. But you will never have me. To me you're just some faggy girl and I need a lover with soul power. You ain't got no soul power.

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

ah maybe i went too far, i was trying to avoid making her all 'super heroic' but....

still, nevermind, i'm British so fags are cigarettes - and i LOVE cigarettes!

[memeworrywort.livejournal.com]

My previous comment was Of Montreal lyrics. In case you were wondering...

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

fair enuff.

[stoshagownozad.livejournal.com]

Oh I like that one especially - the old life splashing on Eva when she walks down the memory wall...

And of course she has a soul power :)

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

and so do you! :))))))

[med_cat]

Very interesting...you're a very good writer :)

And mood mice were cute ;)

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

that's very kind - thank you :))

[med_cat]

'Twas sincerely meant and you're welcome ;)

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

*grin* :)))

[rebeccawilde.livejournal.com]

MOOD MICE FOREVER!!!

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

i'd love some! LOL! :))

[betsycontent.livejournal.com]

beautifully original concept. :)

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

cheers! :))