I hope you get to spend a little more time at home, and on your bike then :) I'm back in the UK again, and should be here for a reasonable amount of time now; we've still to get any resolution from the MGA in Malta on what's happening with the company and I definitely won't have to plan what to do next before we do. I also have a recruiter to talk to this afternoon who wants to put me up for a CPO/co-MD job that would start next year for someone big. I'm not sure how interested I am, but I've agreed to talk to him and find out more about it.
Now, I wonder how good my memory for names is? [Edit: too long! I shall split it over two posts]
The Drive Rotesand, 4am: I have no idea why I have to be up this early. Eliza told me I had to, so I am, but it's not even light yet and the wind is getting up and blowing the sand about and it gets in my hair. And my hair takes twenty minutes to get right, so I had to get up even earlier to make sure it was done properly. Stupid sand. Eliza says I have to take the buggy out and get to Mars-main before 7am. I told her I could just leave at 6:30 and drive fast and she smiled at me, the way she does before she says something complicated and then asks me if I understood her. Then she said something complicated about urns and -alitys and someone called 'Di' and asked me if I understood her. I just smiled and nodded, like I did at school, and she ran her hands through my hair, messing it up, and told me that I needed to leave at 4am. Stupid Di.
Fistula, 5am: Fistula is the settlement about half-way between Rotesand and Mars-main. It's much smaller than either of them and Eliza calls it a way-point. It's just about a dozen buildings under a glass dome that's not even properly spherical: it's all triangles and girders holding it all together. It's pretty at night when it's lit up from the inside though. There are people who stay there all the time, which is amazing; I get bored when I'm at Rotesand for more than two weeks, and that's at least six times the size of Fistula. It's really quiet when I approach it though; usually there's Jim and Patricia on duty at the gates, but neither of them are there this time. I drive through and it's like everyone's asleep. Which, given the time, they should be. Like me. I could have been asleep for another hour still, and just driven fast to Mars-main.
Riverstill, 5:17am: The next part of the drive runs alongside a deep crack in the ground. Eliza calls it a canal and laughs when she says it, though I don't know what the joke is, so I just laugh as well and hope noone asks me to explain it. She once told me, when she was in a good mood and walking with Andreiy, that Riverstill was a joke name for it, but it stuck and now they can't change it. I didn't see what was funny about it, but she and Andreiy seemed to be happy so I went along with it. The crack is deep, long, and sort of rectangular. If you put water in it, you could float those long thin, flat boats on it that I sometimes saw on the rivers back on earth when my dad was still alive. Stupid Alzheimers. The crack is normally dark and quiet, though Eliza has told me that it's home to a few creatures now. She talks about oxygen plants, but there are no plants on Mars. Well, yet. They're starting to plant some and I've seen the seedlings at Rotesand and Mars-main, though no-one will let me help with them. But these oxygen plants she talks about have changed the air here somehow, and now there are things living in Riverstill. At least, she says there are, but I've not seen any. Only... while I've driving along Riverstill, there are things moving in the pre-dawn light. They're shadowy and maybe the size of a bird. A small bird I suppose; my dad took me to see an ostrich once and that was a bloody big bird! But now there are bird-sized things moving around, and then they get into the lights of the buggy they sort of freeze up, and then try and fly away. They flap wings that don't get them more than a couple of centimetres off the ground and sort of run-hop-flap away from the buggy. Towards Fistula.
3 comments:
I hope you get to spend a little more time at home, and on your bike then :) I'm back in the UK again, and should be here for a reasonable amount of time now; we've still to get any resolution from the MGA in Malta on what's happening with the company and I definitely won't have to plan what to do next before we do. I also have a recruiter to talk to this afternoon who wants to put me up for a CPO/co-MD job that would start next year for someone big. I'm not sure how interested I am, but I've agreed to talk to him and find out more about it.
Now, I wonder how good my memory for names is? [Edit: too long! I shall split it over two posts]
The Drive
Rotesand, 4am: I have no idea why I have to be up this early. Eliza told me I had to, so I am, but it's not even light yet and the wind is getting up and blowing the sand about and it gets in my hair. And my hair takes twenty minutes to get right, so I had to get up even earlier to make sure it was done properly. Stupid sand.
Eliza says I have to take the buggy out and get to Mars-main before 7am. I told her I could just leave at 6:30 and drive fast and she smiled at me, the way she does before she says something complicated and then asks me if I understood her. Then she said something complicated about urns and -alitys and someone called 'Di' and asked me if I understood her. I just smiled and nodded, like I did at school, and she ran her hands through my hair, messing it up, and told me that I needed to leave at 4am. Stupid Di.
Fistula, 5am: Fistula is the settlement about half-way between Rotesand and Mars-main. It's much smaller than either of them and Eliza calls it a way-point. It's just about a dozen buildings under a glass dome that's not even properly spherical: it's all triangles and girders holding it all together. It's pretty at night when it's lit up from the inside though. There are people who stay there all the time, which is amazing; I get bored when I'm at Rotesand for more than two weeks, and that's at least six times the size of Fistula. It's really quiet when I approach it though; usually there's Jim and Patricia on duty at the gates, but neither of them are there this time. I drive through and it's like everyone's asleep. Which, given the time, they should be. Like me. I could have been asleep for another hour still, and just driven fast to Mars-main.
Riverstill, 5:17am: The next part of the drive runs alongside a deep crack in the ground. Eliza calls it a canal and laughs when she says it, though I don't know what the joke is, so I just laugh as well and hope noone asks me to explain it. She once told me, when she was in a good mood and walking with Andreiy, that Riverstill was a joke name for it, but it stuck and now they can't change it. I didn't see what was funny about it, but she and Andreiy seemed to be happy so I went along with it. The crack is deep, long, and sort of rectangular. If you put water in it, you could float those long thin, flat boats on it that I sometimes saw on the rivers back on earth when my dad was still alive. Stupid Alzheimers.
The crack is normally dark and quiet, though Eliza has told me that it's home to a few creatures now. She talks about oxygen plants, but there are no plants on Mars. Well, yet. They're starting to plant some and I've seen the seedlings at Rotesand and Mars-main, though no-one will let me help with them. But these oxygen plants she talks about have changed the air here somehow, and now there are things living in Riverstill. At least, she says there are, but I've not seen any.
Only... while I've driving along Riverstill, there are things moving in the pre-dawn light. They're shadowy and maybe the size of a bird. A small bird I suppose; my dad took me to see an ostrich once and that was a bloody big bird! But now there are bird-sized things moving around, and then they get into the lights of the buggy they sort of freeze up, and then try and fly away. They flap wings that don't get them more than a couple of centimetres off the ground and sort of run-hop-flap away from the buggy.
Towards Fistula.
Greg - that sounds like an intriguing opportunity. I look forward to continuing the comment catch up and seeing how that meeting turned out!
Oh my goodness. Halfway through first paragraph and I just realized who we're with. So excited to keep reading.
Wow, that narrative voice brought back memories. I feel like this needs a continuation. I sure hope you felt the same!
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