Notes: The promised vignette, and oh my god, these boys are so slow...and so dangerous, Ten, seriously! I thought this up and then I couldn't not do it, but very soon--very, very soon, probably the next vignette--we'll have a real physical and emotional breakthrough. Until then it's one step forward, then two steps sideways, spin around three times and try to catch your balance.
Title: Vignette: The Academy: Artificial Space
***
Some experiments could only be done
in zero gravity.
Most of the documented effects of
zero-g on biological experiments were child’s play at this point, long ago
sourced and verified back when humanity had only been able to send tiny little
shuttles into orbit around Old Earth. The basics, like extreme virulence in
bacteria and larger, stronger protein growths in bioreactors were so well known
as to be ignored for their baseness. Science had incorporated the techniques
into canon, and then with the advent of artificial gravity had no need to look
for ways around those effects because it just wasn’t an issue any longer.
But Ten wanted to experiment with a
new type of biological thin film that might be useful as an implant for a
natural, a kind of second skin that would carry a different strain of Regen—ze
eyed the container from Admiral Liang yearningly, but decided not to open it
yet, not before the delivery mechanism could be proven—and deliver it on a
regulated basis. Of course this sort of thing had been done before, of course it had, Ten wasn’t going to
reinvent the damn wheel if ze didn’t have to, but there were no stores of thin
films on board the ship and it wasn’t all that difficult to grow a protein
matrix, especially in zero-g, and it wasn’t like ze had much to do anyway
because Grennson’s dads had invited all of them to learn some weirdo martial
art and naturally, naturally everyone
had jumped on that chance except for Ten, who didn’t need to occupy hir body in
order to be happy in hir surroundings. All ze needed was hir lab equipment and
a proper hypothesis to test out, and if Cody wanted to spent his mornings kiyaa-ing and hitting people, well, Ten
would get some work done.
Ze had to do it in starts, because
it wasn’t advisable to keep the gravity off in this small section of the ship
all the time, especially when other people were around. Ten had broken into the
guts of the room’s control panel and deactivated the alarm, then done a little
tinkering and—voila! Perfect and highly specific zero-g circumstances, and no
one had figured it out the past two days and there was no discernible change in
the power draw, so overall ze was pretty pleased with hirself.
At least, Ten was pleased with
hirself until the system ze was using to transfer the mild acid that was
thinning the biofilms in their gently-spinning centrifuge suddenly failed. It
was ludicrous, nothing ze could have foreseen, that the joint would come apart
like that especially after ze’d used the molecular zipper to—
Oh
right, Ten thought to hirself as ze watched little globs of acid spill out
the joint between the pump and centrifuge. I forgot the molecular zipper. Which was a ridiculous oversight,
not the sort of thing ze would generally forget but ze hadn’t had time to write
down hir steps for this particular phase of the experiment and ze hadn’t been
sleeping very well either, not with Cody being housed in another room for the
first time in an entire year, which apparently was bothering hir more than it
was him, if his excitement about going and playing with joint locks this morning
was any indication.
Ten frowned and shut off the pump,
and the flow of acid slowed. Fine. It was a bit of a mess but nothing ze couldn’t
handle, ze just had to reattach the tube and—
A floating bubble of acid burst
across the back of Ten’s hand, and the sudden pain halted hir in hir tracks, an
unconscious rictus of fear twisting hir mouth. Ze stared at hir hand, and it
wasn’t a splash of red that ze saw, it was bone and tendon, and hir fingers
curling in on themselves, and ze heard someone screaming and another person
yelling, and it was all pain pain painpainpain…
“Ten?”
Coming out of the fog of…memory? A
nightmare? Whatever it was, it was hard, but Ten managed it for Cody’s sake. “Mmm?”
ze hummed, the only sound hir vocal cords would make at first. “Mm…wai…don’t,
hang on, don’t come in here!” Vision filtered back in, and now hir hand was
purple, and the air was filled with tiny globs of yellowish acid. The door to
the hall was open, and there was Cody in an old dobak he’d borrowed from Jason, the plain black fabric so worn it
was grey now. There was gravity in the hall, but none in the bedroom, and glistening
dots of acid splashed to the ground as they reached the barrier. “Don’t come in
here,” Ten reiterated. “If this stuff gets in your eyes it could blind you.”
“Couldn’t it blind you?” Cody
demanded, his voice somewhere between angry and aghast.
Ten rolled hir eyes. “Which one of
us can use Regen, again? Oh that’s right, me, I can use it, so—” Another lobe
of acid hit hir exposed neck, and ze winced. “Just…just leave, I can handle
this, I just have to get to the control panel.” Which was…on the other side of
the room. Brilliant.
Cody grimaced, then abruptly shut
the door. Ten blinked. Ze hadn’t expected it to be that easy. It was almost
disappointing. Well, no it was definitely
disappointing, but ze couldn’t exactly complain about Cody following hir
directions for once, even if it would have been nice if he’d…
The door opened again just moments
later and Cody came back in, closing the door after himself. He was wearing his
full hovercycle gear, including his helmet and gloves. “That was fast,” Ten
remarked. “You must have run.”
“Shut up,” Cody said tersely. He
made his way over to the control panel, acid splashing fruitlessly against his
protective equipment. “Just…what do I need to do here?”
Well…for the sake of covering hir
tracks, it would be best to decouple the veering nodes one at a time, doubling
back with a scrubber over each one so there was no trace of gravitational
anomaly, but that would take more talking than Ten was feeling up to right now.
Ze’d have to take hir chances with Jason Kim. “See the thingy stuck to the big
blinking cable? Unhook it.” Cody did so, and a second later everything that had
been floating, which was only what Ten had intended to be able to float with
the exception of the acid, crashed to the ground. The centrifuge was
fortunately tethered to the ceiling, so the biofilms didn’t spill everywhere,
but there was more than enough mess thanks to the leaky joint.
Cody took his helmet off and came
over to the bed, where Ten was still bouncing a bit from the firmness of hir
fall. “Are you okay?” he demanded, eyes wide and hands reaching. He didn’t
touch though, which was thoughtful since his gloves were smeared with acid and
Ten didn’t need any more of that on hir body, thanks so much.
“I’m…yes, of course, why wouldn’t I
be okay?” Ten asked, but ze knew hir rebuke wasn’t up to snuff when Cody kept
hovering. “I just need to get cleaned up. A shower will take care of the acid,
it’s not that strong, and then I’ll get back out here and handle the rest of
the bedroom.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Cody
said. “You go bathe.”
“Be careful,” Ten warned him, “the
pH isn’t that extreme but it will still give you trouble if you—”
“Go get in the damn shower, Ten!”
“Fine,” Ten huffed, getting off the
bed and cradling hir hand close to hir chest with as much dignity as ze could
muster, which wasn’t as much as ze would have liked. Stupid hand, stupid…head,
stupid acid and stupid, stupid mistakes, it was the sort of thing Ten hadn’t
had to deal with for years, ze was hardly…it was really…
“Ten.” Cody stepped close and urged
Ten toward the tiny bathroom. “Go on. It’s okay, I’ll be right here if you need
me.”
I don’t need you, Ten wanted to say, but
the lie—the blatant, blatant lie—stuck in hir throat and ze ended up not saying
anything, just getting into the shower. Ze stripped down and left hir clothes
on the floor as ze scrubbed hir skin, the soap automatically correcting hir skin's acidity. The burning went away almost instantly and the worst spot, on the
back of hir hand, was really the only one that needed attention once ze was
rinsed off. Regardless, Ten stayed in the shower longer than ze strictly needed
to, trying to follow the vision that had struck hir so vividly earlier.
Ten didn’t remember much about hir
parents: they were scientists, they were explorers, and they had left hir behind
without a word when they left Solaydor. Ten stared at hir hands for a long
time, trying to get the crispness of that vision back, the way hir hands had
curled into unwilling fists, the heat and change in color—mottled white and
red, so strange, and the way the flesh had just melted away on top, leaving
such a grisly view behind. Screaming…high pitched but not hir own, a woman’s…and
the yelling…maybe it had been hir parents? Some kind of accident, some way Ten
had been injured?
Or maybe it wasn’t a memory at all,
just another twist of Ten’s admittedly twisty brain.
“Ten?” The bathroom door opened and
Cody stepped inside. He was in casual clothes now, and his arms were bare. “I
cleaned your room up, I’m pretty sure I got all of the acid. There wasn’t
actually that much, and the walls will actually tell you where something
corrosive is going on, so…yeah. Um, are you clean yet? Do you need the medbay?”
“You need to sleep with me,” Ten
blurted, then soldiered on once ze realized it would do hir no good to waste
time being mortified. “I don’t mean we need to have sex, except we really, really do and I’m going to combust if we
don’t actually do that soon,” damn Grennson and his over-watchful parents
anyway, “ but I need you to sleep in the same room with me. I can’t concentrate
the way I should without you, and honestly what happened out there was almost
as much your responsibility as it was mine, because how am I supposed to
remember the little things when I’m so tired I can barely see, and I know I’d
sleep a lot better if I could have you…here. With me.” Ze waited silently,
shifting from foot to foot on the wet floor of the shower and wanting to let
hir eyes wander, but not quite able to look away from Cody’s stupid brown eyes
and his crazy yellow curls and the way a small, slow smile spread across his
face.
“You could just have said that you
missed me,” Cody said, his smile becoming a grin. “You didn’t have to make your
room into a death trap to get the point across.”
“It was hardly a death trap, I would have taken care of
everything in good time, I was just…I just…you know what, nevermind, stay in
your own room, it’s not like I need you to function, I can handle things just
fine—”
“I get nightmares without you,”
Cody said quietly. “Mostly about the bike blowing up, but some of them are of
Pam, only instead of choking me to death she’s choking you. Sometimes Grennson.”
“Oh.” Well, that wasn’t exactly
good, but there was something darkly gratifying about being a balm against a
person’s demons. “So, it’s…mutual?”
“It’s always been mutual.” They
stared at each other for a moment before Cody said, “I can leave most of my
stuff in the other room, but I’ll move some clothes into your storage, if you’ve
left any space at all.”
“Far right corner, there’s at least
five inches of free shelf,” Ten said automatically. These rooms were even smaller than the one they'd shared at the Academy, but Ten wasn't going to let that stop hir now. Space was an artificial construct of quantum physics anyway. “I was going to use it for
my mini-titration kit, but I guess that can wait to be unpacked until we get to
Perelan.”
“How generous,” Cody said dryly,
but he was still smiling when he left, and once Ten got out of the shower and
started to towel off, ze was a little surprised to see a matching smile still
visible on hir own face. Huh. Ridiculous, but hard to keep from happening when
ze didn’t even realize it was
happening.
“Ten.” The room’s comm suddenly spoke
with Jason’s voice. “When you’re done in the shower, meet me in the bridge so
we can talk about ship safety protocols while flying through space.”
Ten rolled hir eyes. “Well, shit.”
“My thoughts exactly, Ten. Get out
here.”
“I’m coming!” And ze was…once ze
made sure Cody found those five inches. Ze wanted him to feel welcome, after
all.
.jpg)
