Those who spend long times in cryogenic sleep describe different experiences. Some feel no time has passed at all-they feel a rush of cold air, they close their eyes, then they wake up feeling refreshed. Others feel on the fringe of conscious in a disconnected way, and for these people cryo is unpleasant, an unrestful sleep leaving them irritable. Others, perhaps the most unlucky (or those on very cheaply outfitted ships, like this one), feel a vague sense of deep nausea that travels with them through the eternity of sleep, just below the point where they are conscious-they usually wake up retching or worse.
And, some lose themselves in endless dreams, their minds flipping through memories and concepts like paging through a book...Camilla was one of these. She dreams the starscapes of her youth, when things had seemed so simple...before the SDF had came, in their utilitarian, blunt nosed starships and harsh, stone-scrape voices...she dreams of her mother and her father, her sister and two brothers, a former lover, or three. It's almost like she is reliving her life. As she approaches waking-a minute or so in real life, an eternity inside-the dreams become stranger and more disturbing...she dreams of the strange stars of alien worlds, impossible shapes threaded through impossible shapes, unearthly music from the spheres of creation, and a plume of fire rising into the sky...she sees her birth, and her eventual death, and knows it will be a hard one. Harder than anyone should have to bear, she thinks, and then...
...
She wakes up with a slight headache and a growling stomach, these memories leaving only vague, fragmentary imprint-and soon even those will be gone. They flutter away like lunar moths around a chemlight. All she thinks of now are the basics. I am very hungry. She knows not to rush things, however, this is deep inside her. Patience. Reaches for a rehydration pill, and lets her stomach settle so she doesn't retch all over the floor like a 1st year Spacewalker. Her waking mind slowly comes back.
Camilla Rinaldo. Lunar. Solar Engineer. Discovered the .2 formula for squeezing more power from outward radial solar collectors-ORADs. It's not much, you think, but it adds up on the fringe. Communications...expert, she thinks with pride, a twinge of arrogance. Graduated fourth in slot from Sol-def Technological Academy. Four years in the Belt Rangers as a bridge officer on board the LRS Sweetcock. Terrible name for a ship, but they did good work. She grimaces, then smiles. It's all coming back to her...
Xeno-Poaching. Highly illegal. She signed the contract, pressed her stamp, sold her soul. Has questioned the wisdom of this. Violence and conflict are rarely the answers. But, they need the money badly-more than they will ever admit. Lunars are proud and self-reliant. Don't like to ask for help, even if they need it. Money for food, medicine, weapons to defend themselves, the parts to run their ships and stations. Eventually, funding the Great Journey outward, where they will find a world far, far from Earth and it's...policies. She decided the morality was not hers to decide. Let them judge my bones, the old Lunar saying goes-I have work to do.
She rises-but stays seated, with unearthly grace, all of her seven and a half feet height looming, looking at the other rows of cryo-trays with querying, thoughtful, shadow-mist eyes. Those eyes are striking, even frightening in a certain light-with enlarged iris's and a certain cant-perhaps, because they subtly began to lose their original wholly human shape. Not truly unnatural, or freakish...but enough to subtly tell she is different, that she is Lunar-not Earthen. She wonders who will wake up next, curious as ever.
((OOC: Also, make sure you toss pms to all players Kilakan that we have started the game. Some people might miss the post.))
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Topic: Under the Alien Stars-Burned World (Read 11701 times)