Midway: Chapter 26

  “I really hate seeing it all lit up like this,” Tycho remarked, “it ruins what I like so much about this place.”  He made this remark to Kirana, while they were watching a Gravityball game.  It took place in the bubble he was so fond of stargazing from but when there was a game on, a number of spotlights shone on the bubble to light it up as though it were daytime on a planet.  This had the unfortunate side effect of completely washing out all of the stars.

  The boredom of the void had compelled them to many such creations.  The rock climbing wall in the arboretum, the full gravity gymnasium, and the bubble this game was being held in were some of the more obvious examples, but ones which were less so could be found all over the ship.   The people onboard were a dynamic and changing thing, and so the ship around them needed to be as well.  It continually changed and reconfigured to suit the evolving needs of its inhabitants as they themselves changed, and discovered needs which the founders hadn’t been able to foresee.  One such need was sport, specifically the need for healthy competition onboard.  

  The game was pretty simple.  There was a quarter meter circle of Velcro material on opposite sides of the sphere, and one had to get the Velcro ball to stick to the opponent’s home circle.   There was a central plane dividing the two team’s respective boundaries, and if one was touched by the opposing team in their territory, one had to retreat to their own.  You could throw the ball at your target and have it stick there, or just place it there without getting touched by an opponent in the process.   The rules were simple, but what made the game interesting was the fact that it took place in the complete absence of any gravity, real or artificial.

  “Well it’s not like they always keep it this way, it’s always dark the rest of the time, and from what I hear you use this place more often than the ballers,” Kirana responded without looking away from the action.

  “Oooooh” gasped the crowd as Alissa, one of the four players on deck; hit another player strongly into the wall of the bubble.  The game could be rough, and some players were rougher than others.  Alissa was one of the rougher ones.  This game wasn’t about toughness though; it wasn’t even really about the ability to throw a ball accurately, though that was certainly important.  Much of what made a good player was their intuitive understanding of simple Newtonian mechanics.  In the absence of gravity and the luxury of a ground always there to push against, one had to be able to precisely judge their speed and trajectory in every movement they made.  

  If you wanted to catch a player to tag them, you had to launch yourself off of the bubble or one of the filaments, and in the process aim yourself at where they were going to be when you got there.  It was a game that was ultimately about anticipation and strategy, despite how physically challenging it could be.  It also required the ability to commit; once you launched yourself you were completely at the mercy of physics.  There was no way to stop, slow down, or to change direction until you hit another player, one of the sparse filaments, or the opposite wall.   As a result it was easy to get yourself into trouble which everyone else could also comically see coming a long ways away.  It was also exciting because an occasional miscalculation would inevitably launch a player right into the spectators.

  “So Tycho, we haven’t had much chance to talk lately, how have you been?   How’s school going?” Kirana asked her younger brother who was 14 years her junior.  Due to the sizable age gap between them she felt like she’d helped raise him, and had some maternal affections and sensitivities towards him beyond that of just being his older sister.

  “Well, school is good… I‘m actually enjoying it more and more.   Setia is doing very well… and I’m really looking forward to Zarif coming to my class next year.  There’s not much else going on, really… I’ve just been focusing on work a lot recently.  Oh and… I don’t know how interested you are in this sort of thing, but in what free time I’ve had I’ve been doing some work on the telescopes to get a good image of Haven much earlier than we thought we’d be able to.”

  They both kept their eyes on the game while they talked; their eyes tracking the activity back and forth across the court in unison, but they were nonetheless paying attention primarily to each other and their conversation.  At this point though, Kirana broke her fixation on the game and took a good look at her brother and smiled while he continued to watch the game.  She was happy for him; they all were.  For most of his life it had always seemed as though he’d had some trouble finding his own place on the ship and in the grand scheme of things, but he’d really come to shine in the last couple years since taking on the job of teaching the primary school.  The two siblings and their father had all been incredibly devastated by their mother’s death, but Kirana and Johannes had been additionally concerned that Tycho might come out of it somehow even more dispossessed.  Quite the contrary turned out to be the case as they were happy to discover.  Somehow in the end he came out of it seemingly even better than he’d ever been.  Her best guess was that in the long run the death had shocked him into appreciating what he did have here on the ship instead of fixating on what he didn’t.  Something about working with the children also seemed to have been really good for his spirit.

  “YEAAH!!”  Tycho roared along with the crowd as Kirana returned her attention to the game and tried to figure out what she’d just missed.  The crowd had lurched collectively as one teeming mass after Alissa made a dead on shot as she flew across the bubble, landing a bull’s eye on the Velcro patch in enemy territory.  Alissa was unrivaled in the sport and had been for some time.  It was largely agreed that her dominance probably had something to do with her tertiary training in combat tactics.  If the variously coloured coveralls worn by the crowd hadn’t been stuck by Velcro to the wall of the bubble, they all would have launched into the field of play with the force of their excited cheers.

  “Tycho, can I ask you something?”

  “I believe you just did.”

  Kirana chuckled.  “Seriously though… have you noticed anything different about Dad?  I was talking to him the other day and he seemed almost… distant somehow.  Distant at least for him, you know?”

  “Not really, no… I haven’t noticed.  I wouldn’t worry about it though, Kirana,” her brother replied.   “He’s been under a lot of pressure lately, and I’m sure that the investigation was very trying for him.   He’s not used to dealing with that kind of brutality, and being so regularly and continually confronted by it.”

  “Who is?” she asked.

  “Right.”

  “Yeah, Seth basically said the same thing…  I guess you’re right.” 

  “So you saw the picture?”  Tycho nodded.   “Seth described it to me…  He didn’t want to but I made him,” Kirana continued.  “He came up on their list just a few names before Uzodimma.”

  “Yes… it was horrible.”  It was something he’d been trying to stop thinking about.  “It’s too bad they felt that necessary, to show it to so many people.  I can only guess at how much harm that must have done.   I mean, you seem pretty disturbed by just the description of it.”

  “Yeah… I’m trying not to think about it though.  I just hope that Zarif and Setia never have to see anything like that.   I just hope it’s something that’s behind us now, you know?”

  “I do…” Tycho added.  

  “About Dad though, it’s just… well, he’s always been the most unwavering believer in the ship’s mission, and now… he doesn’t seem so sure anymore and that’s making me wonder about things too… he’s always been my rock for that sort of thing.”

  “He hasn’t said anything to me about it…” Tycho answered as he watched the closing seconds of the game.  “Like I said he’s been through a lot lately, I’m sure that in no time at all he’ll be back to mission cheerleader in chief,” he said with a good natured veneer but a somewhat contemptuous undertone.

  “I hope so…” Kirana offered, unconvinced. 

  With that, the buzzer sounded the end of the game.  Alissa and her two teammates had soundly beaten their opponents, but there was nothing unexpected about that.  Alissa floated her way over to the two and held out her arms for them to grab her as she excitedly collided with them.  They caught and steadied her as she roared with delight.

  “AAAH HA HA HA!!  They were practicing all month and they still couldn’t even come close to beating us.  You’d think they’d have learned their lesson last week when we kicked their ass at basketball too!”  Alissa was lit up with the thrill of victory.  She was somebody who lived for competition, and these sporting events were the only opportunities she ever really got on the ship.  As a result she seemed most alive in moments like these.

  “Congratulations Alissa,” Kirana offered as she secretly cringed a little.  Alissa could make her uncomfortable sometimes.  The more nakedly Alissa expressed her aggressive competitiveness, the more uncomfortable she felt.  “And congratulations!” she added, “your wedding is only a couple days away, right?”

  Alissa’s body slumped and her mood dropped noticeably.  “Yeah… yeah that’s right.” she said as she wiped the sweat off of her face with a towel handed to her by a teammate as he floated by.   “That’s right… you’ll both be there right?”

  “Of course,” Kirana smiled widely.  “We wouldn’t miss it!”

  “Yes,” Tycho added, looking down with much less enthusiasm.  “Yes Alissa of course, I’ll be there.”