The Micro-Scenes Thread

I like that conversation! But it makes you think a student like that would sooner be put in ARC than Whatley. Even if it is a case of 'you live in ARC but you can have supervised visits to Whatley and can do remote classes and be part of activities"

Also, side question, what is the difference in sapient and sentient? Sentient is aware of your own existence and sapience is intelligent, right?

Benoftheflies wrote:

I like that conversation! But it makes you think a student like that would sooner be put in ARC than Whatley. Even if it is a case of 'you live in ARC but you can have supervised visits to Whatley and can do remote classes and be part of activities"

Also, side question, what is the difference in sapient and sentient? Sentient is aware of your own existence and sapience is intelligent, right?

Yes, sentience means (conscious) awareness of the environment as separate from oneself. Sapience refers to having at least some reasoning and planning abilities. This is measured on a scale and at least most mammals have at least a small degree of sapience in that they can make plans for something that happens in the future.

A feral child would not be kept in an institution like ARC, which is first of all a research facility and geared towards containing (potentially) dangerous supernatural patients.
Being feral means that the child grew up with little to no human contact. They need a stable family environment to (re)socialise them, and that is not something that ARC would be able to provide. Granted, Whateley is hardly better suited for this. Perhaps one of the more powerful psi-arts teachers would adopt the child, being a full time presence in their life for the first year at the very least, and then -slowly- introduce them to other children. Setting them loose in the insanity that is Whateley is a disaster waiting to happen of course. How far this particular child can be resocialised is far outside the scope of a micro scene of course.

Thanks for the response! I was thinking like CyberKitty. Because of her extreme mental issues (mostly onset by mutation and the surrounding issues, but not soley), she was locked up in an ARC institutional ward. It was protective for both Merry and those around her, but it doesn't mean it was the best environment.

I think if a kid mutates and becomes feral (like degrades in overall reasoning), ARC would be a good temporary place while they get things figured out. Unless that kid was a section 33 case, any bully who picks a fight may open a can of worms that can't be closed

keep her away from the ketchup

Astrodragon wrote:

keep her away from the ketchup

Because students are crunchy and taste good with it?

Marian Griffith wrote:

Astrodragon wrote:

keep her away from the ketchup

Because students are crunchy and taste good with it?

Exactly.
And once you have one, you need to have another. They're like chips that way.

Exodus
Chapter 2 - Midnight Flight


The interior of the Midnight Flight was like a disturbed Tahorru nest with workers running every way. Like the nest it might look disorganised and panicked at first, but on very close inspection it was anything but. At its center was the first mate Jon/an seeing that all the myriads of tasks that normally went with a preparation to launch got done. The only difference was that these tasks normally got done in the days, multiple, prior to disconnecting the umbilicals and grapple, not in the hours the ship was in transit after getting its final shove from the tug boat.

Strapped in his monitoring station in the zero gravity section of the ship, which like all freighters was most of it, Jon/an was direction his small crew of deck hands to verify and safe the myriads of equipment. He was working down the same checklist that the bridge crew was, checking off each item as his hands and eyes on the equipment stated it was secured for a high gravity burn. Because there were thousands of systems that had to be checked individually, he had appealed to the bridge to work from the emergency checklist rather than the standard undocking one. That way The less critical systems and equipment were further down the list and, if they inevitably ran out of time, at least the danger of catastrophic failures was considerably less. Not that he was happy with this, and neither he imagined was the bridge, but given the way the captain had just broken all rules there really was no other option.

He already had to flag a couple of items on the checklist for escalation to command. The most critical being the fact that their water tanks had not been topped off. Standard procedure when docking had fuel tanks filled to capacity first thing, even before unloading of cargo could start, but things like water and food was brought in towards the end of the stay at a station if at all possible. Not all stations they visited could be relied on to provide untainted provisions after all. The crew was not going to be happy with the water rationing locks he had set. Until he knew more about how long they would be travelling the rationing would remain in place. The captain could keep or release the locks, if he got around to reviewing the status updates.

"Jon/an," his planning for getting as much work done as possible in the remaing hours was interrupted by a priority warning. "Cargo is bad."

"How? Kha/du/an?"

"One big box only. No ropes on it."

Jon/an cursed creatively, trying to think of how best to handled it. "Kha/du/an. Leash it. One rope." He then switched to his own priority interupt for the bridge. "Jon/an. We have a box in hold. Who dropped it and how be it leashed?" After a moment consideration he added "Also, need off-duty bridge. Loose things in boxes and stow it."

He directed a couple more of his crew to new checks as they finished their jobs, while waiting for a reply from the bridge and hoping the cargo container he had floating in the cavernous hold was empty.

At the top of his console the countdown to full burn relentlessly ticked down far faster than the remaining items on his checklist. It was clear they were not going to get through it all, but at least the remaining items would be minor.

The priority alert pinged and he frowned as he read the message. Then he hit his own priority override in turn, while silently saying goodbye to the schedule. "Crew," he said "double time the job. Then run to the barn. We have the biggest box ta tie down. An put every wall round it." He re-checked. "An feed it."

He did not listen to the curses that were his reply. He was already running to the cargo hold. Whatever was in that one container, it was maximum structural mass, needed to be fed air and power and had to be shielded every which way the Midnight could inside its hold. Even if he was never involved with the actual negotiations for cargo, he had to tie down the thousands of standard containers the ship usually hauled. He knew the cargo one could find on this remote station and it was nothing like what they had aboard now for what must have been an ungodly transport fee.

On the run to the air lock for the cargo hold he contacted the bridge again, "Jon/an. Tell brass that primary checks will NOT be done all."

That got the expected instant reaction from the captain no less to explain himself. "Cap. Have ONE max mass box in the barn. Need to tie it down and rig feed and put bio, emp and security curtains. Is job for three clads and half day. I have one clad and two hours."

"Full manifest is half day, Mate" the captain was mad no doubt.

"Near same amount of ropes, cap. Just big ones. An no feed or sec in normal cargo. Am at hold now. Hand comm will stop."
He did not of course shutdown the communicator, but the amount of noise would increase a lot as the signal had to make its way through the double hull separating the hold from the spine of the ship.

In the end they managed between the four of them to get the job done in an hour, mostly by focussing entirely on securing the container against acceleration only and postponing the rest of the job until they were in transit. Pretty illegal all told, and if anything would go wrong during transition that container would go through the crew section on its way out, but it was the best they could do under the circumstances. Not to mention that they had still a ton of preparing to do before they could even somewhat safely launch.

He called the bridge on the run "Jon/an, box is safe for goin' faster only. Doin' the big stuff next ..." he checked the countdown "... hour."

"Ke/an," came the reply from the bridge communication officer, "Acceleration only? No manoeuvre, no deceleration?"

"Ay." was all he replied while thinking 'Allways the fancy words'. "Best we could do."

"The captain will not be happy," Ke/an warned him.

"Sure so," Jon/an "We need tying down air, water 'n stuff too."

And they did. Air processing had to be locked down and drained or the sudden accelleration would tear out the delicate filters. The slosh tanks for the many sources of water had to be emptied and put into pressurised containers for much the same reasons. He had no idea yet do about the sewage tanks. Those were normally drained by the station and reseeded before push-off. He couldn't vent them or they would not have working air processing anymore. Leaving it in the sedimentation tanks was dangerous as it would slosh unpredictably under acceleration. The tanks were build sturdy for that reason, but there was a limit to the forces they could take before rupturing.

"Kha/du/an, run to park and toss loose stuff in a box. Then help "Phar/an with water," Jon/an ordered. "Fel/ap/an fast look in kitchen. Then help Dah/et/an with air. Lock down scrubs first."

He himself headed to the to see what he could do about the sewage tanks. Maybe they could throw bedding into the liquid. Those would be unsalvagable, but better sleeping without blankets for a couple of weeks than having the sewage spill into the compartments and having the air recycling messed up.

When the clock ticked down to the last two minutes Jon/an ordered everybody to drop whatever they were doing and run for their crash couches. At the same time the bridge send the ship wide 'Manoeuvres imminent' alert and set the countdown timer to flashing seconds in bright red. There was no time for most of the lower decks crew to get into their pressure suits. Which was another safety violation, but they were racking up so many of those that more did not seem to matter anymore. Of course should something go wrong during acceleration or lining up for the jump gate they would have no chance at survival, but the entire crew knew that odds of escape pods getting picked up this far away from any station was purely theoretical at best. Nobody cared enough to go look for a crew that was wounded and broke and unable to repay the cost of a rescue mission. Even if theoretically it was required of both the stations, habitats and even the jump gate crew to assist spacers in need.

Jon/an barely made it to his own crash couch, as he had to check all his crew for having properly secured their safety harness, before the countdown reached zero and the emergency lighting switched on. The big engines far down the ship's spine had been spooling up for the past two hours but now fully came to life. Everybody groaned under the high acceleration, which would continue for several hours until the ship passed the speed at which the jump gate's field could snap it up. Jon/an though was not paying attention to that, nor to the heavy weight trying to crush him down. At least he ignored it to the best of his ability as he had more pressing concerns. Launch position did not allow his console screen to be in front of him, and moving to full power had automatically retracted it, but if he strained himself to turn his head he could see, barely, the summary he had programmed hours earlier. The tension in the straps of their one cargo container, pressure readouts of the water and fuel readouts, monitors of the air ducts and so on. The bridge of course was monitoring the same feeds as he was but they had plenty of other things to pay attention to and might miss a warning sign while there was still a few seconds to adjust.

The rest of the lower deck crew was either speaking softly through the local comm system, or had closed their eyes and concentrated on breathing. Which was getting increasingly harder for those who had not made it into their pressure suits. The suits had some support in place to counter the high gravity.

Won/Arr/Ce/annh interrupted the chatter well an hour into accelleration. "Why are some out of suits?" she demanded reasonably. As the crew's part time medic it was one of her tasks to keep an eye on the physical readouts of the entire crew.

Jon/an fought to draw in enough breath to be able to speak. "Was no time. Made seats ... ... only seconds."

The young woman's voice was also strained with effort but she had counter pressure and stimulants to help fight the weight pressing down on her. "Want die?"

Before Jon/an or any of the others could reply in the negative she growled, a little. "No matter. Add high oxygen mix. Try keep breathing."

The ship continued to speed up at crushing presssures and at some time as the hours ticked by he passed out.

* * * * * * * * *

At the bridge of the Midnight Flight it was the usual controlled chaos of a massive ship lining up for a warp transit while moving at a measurable fraction of lightspeed. The acceleration made every move a slow, exhausting effort and the oversized engines made precise control difficult. Military grade computers capable of handling these tasks semi-autonomously were far out of reach of the budget of even the largest trade companies. Assuming they were even for sale. So, the minute corrections had to be made by hand, while what computing power they had access to was integrating the ships hyperspace signature with the gate's warp field.

Scan was calling out calibration numbers every few seconds which the ship's pilot kept, based on the corrections called out by the navigator, adjusting for the slight wobble in the ancient gate warp field as well as the distortions in the spacetime caused by the ship ahead of them in the queue. All of them were going full out in their acceleration burns. It would take quite a while before the local space had settled down enough to not form a navigation hazard for the solar system.

Ahead of the freighter were several other ships that had started their run earlier, and more were following them. In fact, the line stretched all the way back to the station, hours of hard acceleration behind them. This was definitely unusual for such an out of the way station that rarely saw more than a handful of arrivals and departures each day.

If the bridge crew was curious why there was such an exodus, and why they were in it, they were too busy and too experienced to bother with speculating. Something had spooked the traders on Arghfhindallh-4-3 badly, and those that read the signs and were in a position to flee were doing so even now. It was enough that the captain put them near the front of the departure queue, proving that he was sharp enough to read the signs, whatever they may have been, well ahead of almost all other captains.

"Cap," the pilot called out. "Speed one." Indicating that they had just passed the minimum speed that allowed for linking up with the warp field, if only barely and allowing only a short warp.

Several minutes later navigation called out "Pre link." There was now a tentative integration of their signature with the warpfield.

This was shortly followed by "Count down. Final approach."

The Midnight Flight was now commited to gate transit, straining to get every bit of speed and field integration to increase the jump distance, while following the ships ahead of them as closely as the cycle time of the old gate allowed.

"Link is good. Count at ... ... 60." the countdown timer flipped to the 60 seconds countdown. "Field pulse zero point 2 increments. Signature increase linear." All were signs of a nominal jump gate insertion.

Those breathless last seconds that were at the same time frantic with last fraction of second adjustment and calm as they were now commited. Regardless of what they did, they were now commited to jump out of the system. They were drawing virtual particles from the gate structure to power up the ship's signature to the point where they could fold their own micro universe around themselves as they crossed the mouth of the gate. The higher the speed the more particles they could store up and the longer the fold would last. That was why fast ships started their run from the far side of the sun relative to the gate and had vastly oversized signature generators and storage systems to create folds that would hold out for thousands of lightyears instead of the four, maybe, that a freighter like the Midnight Flight could achieve.

"Alert alert," scan called out. "Storm signs at the gate."

The captain ordered "punch it" without hesitation. Storm sign was spacer slang for heavy energy fluctiation at a gate. Those were normal when a ship was pulled through. Of course, the departing ships would not have caused this call-out. Their affect on the warp field were expected and part of the cycle time. Out of sequence fluctations on the other hand were either sign of a gate malfunction or of a suicidal ship coming through in the wrong direction.
In the first case punching the ship through ahead of schedule would get them killed quickly. But in the second case not departing would likely kill them. By entering the warp their ship became partially disconnected from normal space time, the stronger the interface the further they would be pre-shifted and the less interaction they would have with normal matter exiting the gate.

The ship lurched weirdly as the pilot flared their own signature emitters and entered the warp field at the far edge of it.

Something massive emerged from the gate and in a nano second was past them, knocking the freighter minutely off-axis. Of more immediate concern was that they were ringing like a bell and the ominous crunching sound echoing through the hill. Obviously they were not pre-shifted far enough to avoid all interaction with whoever had, deliberately and either suicidally or murderously, transited a gate in the opposite direction.

The crew fought to stabilise their flight in the warp. Getting the ship on its original course would be impossible while they were locked in the field, but hopefully they would not be off by more than a oouple of billion kilometers rather than considerable fraction of a lightyear. In the mean time, the instability in the ship caused a real wave effect in the corridors that was not doing the rational mind any good. Even normal stability was weird enough that a majority of species prefered to ride out the warp heavily sedated rather than risk higher brain functions. The Honshi were not that badly affected, but seeing the room around them weave in and out of reality was a bit much for any species, no matter how hardy. They needed to line up the ship's central corridor with the space fold that was carrying them. After that they needed to find out how much damage they had taken. And how far short of their original endpoint they would emerge.