🌓

Copying what Zeta did, you push yourself off of the wall and accelerate through three steps, landing at the corner and launching yourself from there. Now you’re in the air, no longer bound to the wall by rotation. You drift over the edge of the world and above the stars, magnified through the watery barrier below you. Having only been in microgravity once, you have little grasp on how to control yourself at this point, and your body rotates. Looking “up” you see the middle of the habitable strip in your sky, and the park, in shadow, glistens with tiny blue lights of the bioluminescent insects, its own stars.

There’s little time to appreciate the experience, though, when you turn back around you see the corner of the habitable strip fast approaching. You try to position yourself for landing but you can’t make your body cooperate. You also didn’t have the strength to jump the whole way across, and you can see you’re going to come down on the glass. You hit the hard surface sideways, your arm taking the brunt of the blow, and slide across the smooth panel, fast approaching the metal barrier at its edge headfirst.

[take 2 damage (physical)]

Floating in the void, without body or substance, all you feel is the world spinning around you, pulling you to its edge. And all you see is a bright light, which takes on a shape the more you stare. It’s a faint image, but you almost recognize it, the bright outline of a person just your size and shape, surrounding the blackest void. As quickly as it flashes before your eyes, it fades away.

Dazed, you open your eyes to see the world spinning around you a little, like when you were injected with ketamine. It all starts to come back together quickly. You’re lying on your back on the metal surface of the habitation block. You see the glass ceiling above, the bright sun in your eyes, and Zeta kneeling over you, looking concerned.

“…hi,” you say.

“Are you okay?? That looked bad, I, I didn’t know you couldn’t do it!” it says.

“Ahh, my head hurts. I’m probably okay?” you say.

“I was just looking at some first aid guides,” it says. “Um, do you know what your name is?”

“It’s, uh, Aydan.” It’s not that you don’t remember, it’s just that you’ve used a lot of them recently trying to settle on one. But it’s Aydan.

“What time of day is it?”

“Uhh…” you look up to see the sun vanish behind the habitable strip again and feel night fall on you as it does every few minutes. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Where are we?”

“Space…” Your thoughts come together a little more. “TLA.”

“I, uh, I don’t know, do you think you’re okay? Do you want to go to the medical building? You could have a concussion and that could be bad for a technopath or anybody and, and…