trans_9 | In Which A Programmer Discovers the Sensorium [Open]

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In Which A Programmer Discovers the Sensorium [Open]

He'd heard about the Sensorium - places where anything could be created - but hadn't really believed their capabilities until he'd been inside it.

Kira first tried to create a simple white room, and was surprised when the ship seemed to respond to his words, forming, indeed, a white room around him. After that, he'd populated it with little objects and mementos, starting small, until he'd recreated his room on the Archangel.

Where to go after this? The possibilities were endless, and so he couldn't really resist trying to see how far he could take it. So, he requested a different style of interface: A computer pad through which he could describe the area he had in mind. Kira's fingers flew over the keyboard, and before long, the white room had become a beautiful, idyllic garden in front of a large manor house, complete with glass-covered gazebo.

Beyond that, though, the rest of the world began to take shape - a balcony overlooking large body of water, in the center of which was a massive pillar that stretched high into the sky... where it disappeared from view. In fact, though the walls did an excellent job at recreating the illusion of a blue sky, the entire place was contained as part of a space colony - or, as known in his world, a PLANT.

It was Lacus' manor garden, where he'd awoken after the destruction of his Strike. He'd only spent a brief amount of time here as he recuperated, but it was still... relaxing. It felt peaceful.

Kira sat on one of the garden benches, looking up at the sky, and feeling the breeze across his face. None of it was real; it was just a simulation that he'd programmed. But how could he ever tell the difference?

(ooc: Open, open, open! Come bug and/or meet Kira :D

Also, this is a truly open log. Feel free to thread hop or interject if only to meet new people 8D)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Oh... PLANTs are almost all hourglass-shaped. This is residential, so it's made to look like the sky, but industrial ones will have buildings along the sides, too," Kira elaborated, actually seeming fairly animated for once.

And then the other girl - the one with the pointed ears... did they know each other? - mentioned her own star, 'Abrielsec.' Kira blinked for a moment before looking slightly away. "Ah... I'm sorry, I've never heard of Abrielsec."

"Zdravstvuyte," Luly says in Lafiel's direction (the Russian is weirdly accented, but just-barely-passable). "Why the... oh, it rotates around the center axis?" Luly says to Kira, trying to extrapolate it out in her head. "Anything we had like that, it was all wheel-and-spoke arrangements..."

"Cluge sa." She replies in Baronh, which is an entirely different language but sounds oddly similar.

"It's near the center of the galaxy. All the sections of the capitol rotate around the star in precisely timed orbits. It has two million permanent residents and just as many visitors." There's something oddly familiar about this boy's features and dress. She is sure she doesn't know him, in fact that he does not come from anywhere near her universe or time. What could it be? "Do your people live in space too?"

Kira nodded again to the black-skinned woman. "Right, they rotate axially... well, the industrial ones don't, but that's because they're cylindrical. The hourglass shapes all spin end over end for gravity."

The two know each other, and for a moment, Kira wondered if they were from the same - or similar - worlds. He listened to the newcomer describe her world, and was actually surprised at how... small it seemed. Only two million? There'd been much bigger cities on Earth, hadn't there?

"Actually... Humans live both on Earth and in the PLANTs in orbit. I was born on Earth, but I went to the PLANTs to study." For the moment, he chose to omit the divide between the Naturals and Coordinators that largely fell between the Earth and the colonies.

Luly's lips curl into a slight 'o'. "I'm the opposite. Well, not exactly, but—y'know what I mean. Graduate of the Greater Chicago Armed Forces Academy." She glances over at Lafiel, looking slightly confused... she thinks the small population numbers seem a little funny, too.

Why are they looking at me? Oh... "There are only about twenty seven million of us Abh and most of us are either trading or in the Star Forces. We began as nomads, and many of us still find that kind of lifestyle comforting." She thinks for a moment. "So the space dwellers in your universe allow landers to come up and study at their higher learning institutions?"

"So... you trained on Earth?" Boy, Kira hadn't expected that. Well, he guessed that what Selene had told him about others coming to Earth was true. It was still hard to grasp.

At Lafiel's question, Kira couldn't completely hide a momentary expression of discomfort. "Heliopolis was a neutral colony," he said carefully. "But ... we're all humans. There's no reason that people from Earth and those born on a PLANT should distrust one another."

"Yeah." Luly's face slides into momentary unhappiness. "Kind of hard to go anywhere else, the Migou interdiction started a couple of years before that..." She lets out a small sigh, straightens up, and her face relaxes. "Sorry, don't mean to get all mopey on you..."

"It's all right, Meluly. Being grounded like that would upset me as well." She offers her what she hopes is a reassuring little smile. "The landers distrust us very much, but then we are two different species by the strictest definition..."

"The strictest definition? What do you mean?" Kira's genuinely curious - he wonders if it's something like the Natural/Coordinator divide from his world.

Luly grins a little and looks at Kira—then her gaze shifts over to settle on one of Lafiel's ears.

"Also not human," she says... but it's probably no great surprise with her, given the freaky skin and eye colorations.

"We were created as natural explorers." She flashed a conspirational look to Luly that rides on her lopsided smile. "Space is our home. A lander can legally become an Abh but we can't interbreed."

So... it wasn't quite like the situation he knew, but it seemed somewhat close enough - especially if the blue-haired woman's insinuation that they had been 'created' meant what he thought it did. "...were your creators human, then?"

He paused, looking back at the central support pillar, tracing it all the way until it vanished in the clouds. "Where I come from... there are genetically enhanced humans called Coordinators. Most Coordinators live up on the PLANTs, and most Naturals live on Earth." Kira fell quiet for a moment. "It's not quite the same thing, but..." he trailed off.

"I'm Nazzadi," Luly says quietly. "We were... made... as an invasion force by the Migou, altered out of human genetics." She perks up a little. "But we decided we liked our cousins better than the slavemasters," she adds, looking up at where the support column fades out of sight. "Interbreeding's possible, but it doesn't happen much... but as far as anybody can tell, the Xenomixes really are a completely new race."

"But there are some 'Coordinators' who live on planets?" She asks Kira. Who would choose to live with all that oppresive gravity anyway? Not that she disliked planets. She had seen some interesting things on Clasbul and remembered admired the paintings of planetary scenes on Gosrauth. But all that gravity...That was what that heavier skeleton was for, she supposed. "As you can see, the two of us are relatively young as species are concerned. But we hope we can understand you...That is, assuming you are a natural human."

Kira wasn't quite sure how to take the information. "I'm sorry," he said quietly to Meluly. "No one should be made to be a weapon. It doesn't matter who."

Lafiel's question was hard, for an entirely different reason. Even though Kira knew these people weren't from his world; he knew they weren't part of the situation... it still felt vaguely uncomfortable. "Yes, there are some Coordinators on Earth, and some Naturals on the PLANTs." He shook his head. "...even if I was born on Earth, I'm a Coordinator."

"Welcome to the human-but-not-really club," Meluly says with a little smirk. She stretches a little, and ambles over to sit on the grass—with the red cloth wrap she's wearing instead of one of the plant suits, her toes can stretch out against it, and she seems to be rather enjoying the opportunity.

"What's it like in here when the lights are turned off?"

"Please do not take this as an insult, but you don't look at all adapted for space. Your bone structure is too heavy." Lafiel doesn't mean this as a comment about weight. Abh don't get obese, so its use as an insult is almost forgotten. Their bones are simply lighter, like those of birds.

She joins Meluly on the grass, feeling the grass poke between her fingers as she leans back on her palms. The scent and feel is nostalgic...After years on the battlefield, she'd forgotten how good it felt. "There's only one way to find out..."

Kira frowned at what Meluly had said. "My parents were Naturals... Coordinators are just as human as anyone." He looked to the side. "That's why it doesn't make sense that..." he trailed off, shaking his head. "Nevermind. It isn't important."

Lafiel's comment, on the other hand, just perplexed him, and he looked visibly confused. "Ah... too heavy? Too heavy for what?" After all, the entire reason that PLANTs had artificial gravity was to prevent muscle atrophy, wasn't it? So that even those who lived in space could venture down to Earth and not be crippled.

At the question, though, Kira looked down at the computer pad he was still holding. If they wanted to see what it looked like during the simulated night? "There are mirrors in the hub that pipe in light from the Sun during the day," Kira explained, his fingers flying over the datapad, so quick they were literally a blur. "If we turn the mirror system off, then..."

He hit the button, and above them, a shadow began to cut into the light, closing it off, until...

...the walls were partially translucent - enough to block out the harshest of the sun's light, but higher up, towards the middle, it was more transparent, and thousands upon thousands of glittering pinpricks filled the simulated sky above them.

Luly lets out a slow hiss of breath, gliding up to her feet. "Oh, that's really clever..." she murmurs. In the darkness, or almost-darkness, her red eyes reflect like a cat's, and her distinct self-confidence in the low light suggests that it may be more than just a fancy eye color.

She pads forward to the edge of the water. "Is that safe to go in?"

"Why for the reduced gravity on...Ohhh!" Lafiel was a little bit embarrassed. "I hadn't thought that maybe your gravity mimicked that of a planet instead of the one daimon i'm used to...There's clearly a lot more cultural interchange between landers and space dwellers in your universe than mine."

If I ever go home, i'll lobby for that. I'll start a foundation and name it after... She shook her head, clearing away the potential detour into melancholy.

Fortunately the sudden closure into night provides a great distraction. She hasn't seen anything like it since childhood, when she would watch the family's gardens, open to the light of Abrielsec, turn their face away from the sun in a stately rotation. She glances down at Meluly, sees her eyes glowing in the night (just like a cat's, she thinks, having grown up around them).

"These are the stars from Terra, correct?" She adds to Kira's burden of questions.

"I guess there is," Kira gave a half-nod, half-shrug to Lafiel. "There are people who go between PLANT and Earth pretty regularly."

His attention turned to Meluly, who was currently heading toward the water, and he... frowned. "It should be safe - it would if this were the real thing, anyway." But after all this was just a simulation - how real could it get?

Well, fairly real, it appeared. Even the stars were all how they should have been. "Yes, they are," he confirmed to Lafiel. "Earth should be right..." he did some quick spatial orientation in his mind, and then pointed down to the ground and slightly behind him. "It would be right there, if this were real."

Luly slinks forward to the edge of the water like a cat; in the darkness her movement is gracedul, almost inhumanly so, and self-assured enough that she can probably see in the dim light very well.

She twists, skimming a black belt crusted with pockets out from under the red cloth wrapped around her - then a blocky-looking holster removed from her bare thigh under the makeshift garment, dropping both on the grass. The dull gunmetal of the weapon's aft end gleams dully against the black cloth of the holster.

And then Meluly shucks off the almost-a-dress entirely, and those silver-white tattoos that trace across her whole body stand out much more than her own skin does, turning her into a ghostly artwork against the night. With the ebon darkness of her skin, if it weren't for the tattoos and the crimson of her eyes, she'd be near-invisible.

She pauses a moment in silhouette, then dives gracefully into the water.

Lafiel barely succeeds in not gaping open mouthed. Her face glows bright red as Meluly's tattoos. Evidently her people do not have a nudity taboo...

She has often overheard people talk about her beauty but right now she feels like some homely hausfrau in comparison to Luly's exotic glow. She's like some great cat... She thinks, extrapolating from her own family's cats and videos she's seen of panthers.

Trying not to look too embarrassed, she crawls to where the water chatters at the shore. "Is it alright?"

Kira's mind registered what Meluly was going to do the moment before she did it - so by the time she moved to disrobe, he was always avowedly looking in the opposite direction. He hadn't expected that at all.

He still doesn't look at the shore, focusing his attention up at the stars, as Lafiel asks him. "It's just a simulation, right? There aren't any rules you have to worry about."

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