A Visitor to the Future - 3 - A View from the Void
I stood at that window for a timeless moment. My eyes widened and took in every star, every speck, and when I thought I was almost done, I saw a tiny silver sliver emerge as the moon begin to peek out from behind it, drawing me further into the sight. I glanced around once only, to see Sarkona beaming a wide smile at me, eyes damp. "I remember my first time off-world too," they said, "Take as long as you need."
As I gazed, I thought of how lucky I was to be able to see this. So few in my time were able to see such things. The sight of the Earth ever so slowly - almost imperceptibly - growing bigger in the window - it was something to behold.
Eventually reality grabbed me again in a very audible way as my stomach growled noisly. The wonders of the future would have to wait.
"Ah," said Sarkona, noticing the noise, "Yes, we still do eat food here. I could use a bite to eat myself, I haven't eaten yet today." They gestured in the same direction we had been walking earlier. "Come, this way. Here's your first true lesson in life in space - always follow the patterns."
I now saw that what I had taken for wall art earlier was actually a series of arrows - though they were beautiful in design. Sarkona explained that on gravity rings like this, moving in the direction of travel was recommended. Moving in the opposite direction would counteract the spin of the vessel's ring - not enough for you to fly off, but it would make things feel slightly off.
"And considering your nausea earlier, we'll give that a pass," Sarkona finished explaining, "There are no-gravity areas of the ship too, but we'll stay away from those for now."
We continued our walk until we arrived at a door. Sarkona pointed to the writing above the door. "This is written Human, and roughly translates to Eating Place."
"Human?" I asked, "You mean to say there's a human language now?"
"Oh yes!" said Sarkona. "In your time there were individuals tinkering with constructed languages, such as Esperanto and Klingon. Lessons learned from them eventually incremented into Human. It's super! Very easy to learn, children as young as five or six can be fully fluent - well, that's not all due to Human - a lot of that is due to improved understanding of learning and child development. Which is what I'm interested in as a Bio-Developer. It's so interesting how different areas of study benefit one another."
"So you're saying I'll have to learn Human?"
They cocked their head and answered, "It would be useful to learn, but you don't have to. There are other ways to communicate - there are even some English speaking Orgs. Translation is always an option too. But I think you'd enjoy learning it - it'd be a super introduction to teach you how we learn things now too."
We'd both been so pre-occupied talking that we'd failed to notice a lithe young woman standing in the canteen's exit - we were blocking her way. She glanced at both of us, but did not seem annoyed by our stalling her - Sarkona said a sentence in what was presumably Human and gave a bow, to which the woman smiled and replied. Then she went on her way.
"Sorry," I said, "I should have noticed."
Sarkona laughed, "Don't worry, you'll find that most people don't care about things like that here. Manners and habits will take you some time to get used to. I'll explain in more detail later, but people tend to be more patient these days."
The canteen was ridiculously clean. Every table had not a smudge on it. The chairs looked like the stool Sarkona had brought in earlier - it was topped by the same plush surface. There was a counter area and a seating area - and another large window which looked in the opposite direction to the one I'd seen earlier. I made a conscious decision not to approach it - I needed food.
"I'm happy to cook for us both - please, continue to ask away." Sarkona stepped behind the counter and began to prepare some food. They reached under the counter and pulled out some leafy greens, some cubes of some kind, and spices. I remained standing, hesitantly eying the stool.
"Can I ask, what's with the chair cushion? It doesn't look like any fabric I've seen."
Sarkona chopped while they talked, "Oh, of course! I should have explained earlier. That is bio-gel - what I was talking about earlier. It has more or less completely replaced fabrics and padding for cushioning - though a small amount of people do still like - ugh - traditional bedding." They cringed slightly. I couldn't help but laugh. "The premise is based upon the idea of distributed support. If you think about sitting on a bed, you're only supported by the parts of your body that touch it - which eventually become uncomfortable. Bio-gel intelligently shapes itself to distribute pressure, meaning you can sit or lay comfortably for far longer. There are also variations on Bio-gel - Med-gel was what you were lying in when you first woke up, with properties useful for Bio-development."
"What, the custard?!?" I said.
Sarkona cracked up at that, a full belly laugh that distracted them from their cooking. It was contagious, and I chuckled too. "Apologies," they said after a good minute, "There's something so valuable about an outsider's perspective to things we consider mundane. I'd never even considered that before! Custard! Hah!"
Sarkonna happily chopped for a while, and I enjoyed the aftermath of my first (unintentional) joke in one thousand years.
"You should probably know that we're about a week out from Earth," they said, adding the cubes to what looked like a shallow frying pan. "And I will be using that time to try and update you as much as I can on some of the changes over the last thousand years. But you should know that there is no rush to catch up - I'm here to support you for as long as you need."
"I have a question on that, actually. Why was I off Earth in the first place?" I asked.
"Super question. Well, this may come as a shock to you but I figure you're like a hat in a decaying orbit now - probably not as much of a shock as the other revelations today. Earth isn't really the centre of things any more - if the Consortium has anything like a political centre, it's Eru Ilúvatar - which is an orbital habitat near Mars. That's where the cryocontained are stored - it's the most secure place in Sol."
"Eru Ilúvatar? Isn't that from Lord of the Rings?" I said. The series had been a staple of my Mum's reading collection, and parts had often been a bedtime story when I was younger.
"Is it? It was founded when they were still naming stellar bodies after deities, so I guess that means it's a deity in this Lord of the Rings? Well, now you've taught me something, now we're getting somewhere!"
The food was served - it smelled amazing. The greens were familiar enough - spinach, mostly, but the meat seemed to have properties of both fish and steak. It was delicious. A spork was provided to eat with.
"What is this?" I asked, pointing at the meat.
"Oh, that's an asteroid field of a question. Growing up, Malati - my mother - called this variety Rarent - but the official number is supplement 396. You'll find plenty of regional differences in what people like to call the supplements, so it's good to remember the numbers."
"But what is it? Fish, or meat, or...?"
"It's not any of those!" Sarkona said in shock, then seemed to compose themself, realizing that their shock had alarmed me in turn. They put their spork down. "We don't consume other living creatures any more. Super that it came up now - could have offended someone had we not been careful. Remember what I was saying about the Consortium's laws? Self-determination is a very big thing. Eating another living creature is very much against that. I'll need to talk to you about animals in general when we get to Earth - one of the larger controversies in the Consortium. But even asking if food was once alive is about as close as you get to an insult food-wise. It's like saying I suspect that you might try to feed me such things. Make sense?"
I nodded and mentally noted the cultural difference - I suspected there would probably be more to come, and I'd have to get used to them.
Sarkona then seemed to shift gears, now concerned about me, "I should probably have asked - will any of that be a problem for you?"
I shook my head. I'd never been vegetarian before, but I didn't think it'd be a problem. "I don't think so," I said, "But if this isn't from an animal, where does it come from?"
"Supplements are grown in a vat artificially," explained Sarkona, "I think the Bio-dev work on that technology was in its very early stages in your time. Regardless of the various schools of thought on the meat-eating issue, it's magnitudes more efficient, safer, and easier to do on a ship like this one. And there's a lot more variety available too!"
I pointed at my plate with the provided cutlery, "If they all taste this good, I won't have any issues at all," I said, "If you don't mind me changing the subject, on the subject of the ship, how does it work? Does it have a warp drive?"
"Warp drive? You mean faster than light travel? I wish! The greatest minds of the Consortium have been working on that issue for hundreds of years. No, this ship is an Aldrin Cycler, or more colloquially, a Castle. It doesn't even use an engine to move most of the time - the ship is on an orbit of Sol that encounters Mars and Earth regularly. All you have to do is fly a ship up to it, and it'll carry you between Mars and Earth for pretty much free. They're super efficient. From the outside, this ship just looks like a big gravity ring spinning through space." Sarkona took their spork and orbited one finger around it. "As I mentioned earlier, that's how we have gravity here - it's actually just the whole thing spinning - spin gravity."
"So how long have we been travelling?"
"Oh, just over two cycles - sorry, years. But you only woke up for the first time last week!"
My brow creased in puzzlement. "So what have you been doing for the past two years?"
Sarkona pointed at me with their spork. "Working on you! What, do you think that a thousand years of cryocontainment damage can be fixed overnight? We're good, but we're not that good!"