Taking Lots of Falls

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Limentina
Limentina
370 Followers

My throat was dry, my mouth gummy, and I was having some difficulty breathing. Actually I think there was only one thing keeping me from falling apart completely, right there in front of everyone. This was something that I'd figured out a couple of months before and hence I was determined to force out the first words I had lined up to say on the surface of the planet. You see I was pretty sure that I was going to be the first ever intelligent lifeform (yes yes, very funny, quiet at the back) to land on the planet who had not been born there.

"Take me to your leader." I croaked regally, and apparently inaudibly. The medics, chatting amongst themselves, unstrapped me and started to lift me out of my cot.

Instead they flew me to hospital up near London for a week while they established I was going to live and then they took me to my house in Marylebone. Finally there I was, with the weight of the world dragging me down, all set to try to make a life for myself at the bottom of the well.

Part 2 - Economics and the Social Implications of Military Grade Empathy

It was a good house. All on one floor with a galley, a recreational space, a bathroom, a gym, a bedroom and a couple of other rooms which were not set up for use. It wasn't big by local standards but it was about the same total volume as our living space back home and all just for me. Quite a bit of it wasn't usable though, due to the gravity being always on, so it was actually a lot smaller than it first appeared. The whole top side of every room was just wasted space aside from the light fittings for example.

You'd probably think even a place that size would be expensive but the economic gradient between space and the ground is a bit skewed. To describe the products we grow in the crystal factories as very valuable at ground level would be a huge understatement. Even given the small volumes we produce we have a lot of cash coming in. This is generally counterbalanced though by the enormous expense of shipping mass up to orbit. I think something like ninety-eight percent of Mum and Dad's monthly budget goes on postage.

What this meant from my point of view was that, within reason, the cost of anything I needed at ground level was barely going to make a dent in the petty cash. The place I was now living in, to put things in perspective, had been bought out of the household disposable income back in March.

I was getting good value out of it anyway because I didn't leave at all for a full two weeks after I was first wheeled in. This was totally fine with me, I'd spent most of my whole life in a space no larger than this and I wasn't keen on setting out on any EVA in a potentially hostile environment. I'd signed back into the family chat channel as soon as I landed and was in constant touch with Mum and Dad. Weirdly I didn't feel as far away from them as I had thought I would.

My bedroom was decked out with a medical hammock, one that could be zipped shut while I was asleep like I was a baby again. Below the hammock on the floor was a bed, fully made up with pillows and all, I suppose because the people who decorated the room were used to making up beds.

At least initially though it wasn't supposed to be slept in. It was basically there as insurance, a crash mat in case I did somehow contrive to fall out of the hammock. Lacking it I would most certainly have broken myself when I hit the ground as my bones were far too weak to live normally on earth at the moment. Ironic that really when you think about it.

Every day was basically the same. I ate fruit (for which I had an insatiable appetite, I was a total convert, possibly an addict) with various nutritional supplements (not so much) then spent an hour or so in a deep bath where I'd lie and revel in the sensation of floating, weak shadow though it was of the real thing.

After that I'd walk on a treadmill for a couple of hours accompanied by some music or whatever boxset I was currently working on, it's funny how they're still called boxsets really when it's all been streamed off the net since forever. Then my physiotherapist would show up to stretch and pummel the crap out of me for about the same length of time again.

One of my doctors would arrive to observe the second half of the pummelling and stay on for a while afterwards to take bloods, tissue samples, tests, measurements. My right arm was like a pincushion by now but physically I was apparently coming on pretty well. By the time they both had left I'd be exhausted and lounge around on the sofa for a while, usually hooked into Mum and Dad's network at home reviewing logs for the support systems, performance reports from the factories, tweaking tolerances on the production lines, still doing what I could to be part of the team.

Later I'd microwave something for dinner. Aside from fruit I was largely living on salad and vegetarian microwave meals, the former because it was familiar, we grew a lot of edible leaves in orbit, and the latter because the gas stove in the galley scared the crap out of me. The whole concept of using naked flame to prepare food, I mean seriously? I had bravely turned on one of the jets for a moment one evening but quickly turned it off again.

Maybe I'd be ready to use it sometime later. I had a nagging feeling there was too much going into the 'sometime later' pile at the moment but wasn't really ready to address that yet. A kind of meta level of denial I suppose.

In the meantime anyway heating up packaged foods in a closed chamber was something I was comfortable with. Vegetarian because, although I had tried a couple with meat in them, I hadn't been convinced by the texture and my stomach hadn't dealt with it very well either. I'd not had a lot of meat before. We grew a little seafood because fish deal with microgravity ok but even that was an expensive luxury. You can grow a lot of mycoprotein with the resources you need to raise a fish so that's generally what we did instead.

After dinner it would be back on the treadmill again for as long as I could manage and then i'd have another bath before zipping myself into my hammock. Sleep didn't come easily with that constant pressure always there along some part of my body. When it did come it was broken by periods of wakefulness, and by frightening dreams of being under thrust and out of control.

It seemed that after those two weeks had passed though the status quo was going to be derailed at management level. Mum and Dad had decided I was going to need some encouragement to start actually becoming part of society down here. I can't really say they were wrong.

So they had booked me an appointment with some kind of social worker therapist person. They'd done their research of course and found a unit where they specialised in helping immigrants to integrate into life in London. Fair enough yes this was pretty much me, though I wondered how much I really had in common with their usual clients. To be honest with you I was skeptical but you know how it is with parents, there is only so long you can keep saying no. The clinic didn't do house calls - initially I had put this down to an oversight on my parents' part but I was starting to suspect conspiracy. Either way it looked as if I was finally going on my first trip outside.

I walked through the door of the clinic after a harrowing fifty metre walk down the street from where I'd got out of the taxi. I introduced myself to the man behind the desk and he phoned through to let someone know I was there. I was winging my way through this process mostly using memories of similar situations in programs I'd seen on television and it seemed to be going fairly predictably so far.

While I waited I dropped Mum and Dad a line to let them know I'd arrived. Then it wasn't long before a woman walked in and called my name so I waved and stood up. She was only slightly taller than me which was nice. She had dark brown eyes the same shade as the hair hanging nearly to her waist, her skin was very pale. Giving me a big friendly grin she gestured that I should follow her.

She led me back out the door she'd appeared through and I was fully expecting a room with a big desk and a seat on either side. Perhaps with wooden panelling of some sort and one of those brass and green glass lamps on the desk. Bookshelves, there were going to be bookshelves too.

I suppose this was the point at which light entertainment let me down though because in fact it was all bright colours, soft furnishings, and beanbags. She kind of left it for me to choose where we'd sit and a beanbag looked very tempting. In the end though thinking about having to clamber back up from it again, and with a little regret, I chose a higher seat instead.

"I'd help you up if you'd rather." she said.

I didn't understand what she was talking about and I must have been looking a bit lost because she explained. "The beanbag, you wanted to sit there but you're worried about your strength."

"No, let's stay here now," I said, "This is fine."

She nodded but she didn't look entirely happy about it. Once we were seated she reeled off her intro, who they were, what they did, mostly the same stuff as on their website. Then she stopped and stared at me closely for a moment before saying, "Is your attraction to me going to be an issue? We can assign you a different case worker if so."

I supposed it stood to reason you'd find an empath working in social support but I'd never met one before and the first time is always weird apparently. She was right of course, they always are. She was a very good looking woman.

That she could see all this in me was funny in itself and quite liberating. I guess it might have taken me a few more minutes to realise that I was finding her really hot but she'd read it off me already. How they do it, who knows, I'm not even sure if they do. Minute changes in expression, stance, tone of voice which are imperceptible to the rest of us? Those must contribute certainly, but that isn't the really astonishing bit, it's being able to synthesise and use it on the fly which is astounding. I mean think of all the post-processing involved in bringing it up to conscious awareness.

I was trying to remember the little I knew. They were impossible to lie to without specialised training; and there was something about mental health issues but I couldn't recall exactly what.

Almost as fascinating though was what she obviously couldn't see. "It won't be a problem. I'm really in no frame of mind to think about getting into a relationship. I'm still trying to come to terms with the basics."

She nodded, she could probably tell it was true more than I could, "Ok but I think your language is wrong." she said, "Meaningful relationships really are one of the basics in the end."

I talked then, trying to explain what I meant, so I guess the session had begun. Unsurprisingly she was a good listener. She asked me a few questions here and there, mainly to focus my ranting I suppose. I told her how I'd passed more people on the street outside as I walked from the car to the door than I had met in my entire life. How I'd not been able to convince myself to leave the house this morning before I'd written out a flight plan for my trip and logged it with my parents at home. How I was still coming to terms with things falling to the ground when I let go of them. And the constant pain in my joints, in joints I hadn't even known were capable of hurting last month.

She asked me whether I missed my friends and my family and I barely managed to stop myself laughing at her. Because everyone was still there in my earbud you see, pretty much as real as they'd ever been. There were fifteen hundred people in our fairly tightly knit community in Upper London, physically scattered thousands of miles apart from each other in hundreds of different orbits, but just around the corner all the same. I could drop into any number of chat channels whenever I wanted and they'd all be there. Most of them would probably have forgotten I wasn't in orbit any more.

She took a few more notes after we'd stopped talking. Then she looked at me for a long time not asking anything, nor seemingly expecting me to speak.

"Build some relationships, make a friend," she said, "let the physics look after itself."

Which in a strangely inside-out organic way sounded a lot like something someone might have said at home.

"Go for a walk in the park." she added, which didn't.

And that was apparently it, some homework assignments.

"What's it like?" I blurted out before I left, because I was fascinated and I really wanted to know. She hesitated before answering but of course there was no need for me to clarify.

"You'd be amazed how few people ask that, although most people want to." she began.

"It's hard to be sure. So much of it is natural talent that it might be like asking you what it is like to see in colour, or be good at maths, or have no hair. The training we take just sharpens it up a bit really."

I wasn't going to correct her on the hair thing, I got the point. I also noted that she'd apparently picked up on my maths skills even though we hadn't touched on the subject anywhere I could see.

"With my girlfriend it is particularly strange, she's at the other end of the EQ scale to me, terrible at reading people. When we first got together I was afraid it would be a problem, seeing so much in her and her not being able to read me back. But actually it isn't like that at all, quite the opposite. For some reason she can see as deeply into me as I can into her. For her it only works with me though. We think it might be some kind of survival trait, so that people like me can continue to exist and establish rewarding relationships."

She smiled softly before she went on, her gaze momentarily miles away, looking adoringly at someone I couldn't see.

"Professionally it can be difficult feeling too much and not being able to stop. Especially when clients are having a difficult time, abuse, drug addiction, that sort of thing. You know they say you have to learn to switch off? Well that sums up about ninety percent of my training. Having that kind of emotion echoing into me can be harrowing and painful. Not understanding how to deal with it can be very damaging. A lot of us used to end up as mental health inpatients before the talent spotting programs were introduced.

"Working with you though Poppy is a pleasure. You're not really having a bad time at all and you're coping fine. You're just dealing with a lot right now and you need some kind of push to adjust your perception. Talking to you is actually quite exhilarating. Is that the kind of thing you wanted to know?"

I nodded, then thanked her properly. I was quite astonished and touched by how open she had been but then again that's what they do isn't it.

Part 3 - A Walk in the Park

Calling up a local map I had discovered there was a park only a few streets away, so I could make it there on foot. I chose my time carefully - the streets were quiet for a while after it got light. So a couple of mornings later, shortly after my side of the planet had rolled around to bring the sun back into view, I walked carefully along my chosen route. I'd not told my parents I was leaving the house which seemed on the one hand careless bordering on criminal, but on the other daringly transgressive. I still had my phone with me and my earbud in anyway so I wasn't entirely off grid.

The park itself was a total aesthetic overload. There was so much to see that I didn't know where to look first. There were trees, and they were so much bigger and more magnificent than I had thought they would be, although weirdly chaotic and kind of rundown too. They were a lot louder than I had expected as well, why does nobody ever tell you how loud trees are? There was open water and it was so huge that little waves were forming on it.

There were a few other people around the place enjoying themselves. Most like me they were just looking around and drinking in the scenery but some were taking exercise. There weren't so many people that is was overwhelming though, I could handle it. Also notably there were lots of, uncountably many, fairly small animals moving around on their own on both the land and the water, even in the air. A lot of them were making noise as well, a kind of warbling garbling sound like a radio signal dropping out.

I sat down on a seat to try to take this all in, it was absolutely fantastic, I loved it here. This really had been a very good suggestion, I was the happiest I had been for weeks, the happiest I had been since I discovered I could order fruit online and it would just show up.

A little searching on my phone revealed that most of the animals were ducks, and I was taken aback to find that they were described as omnivorous. They were pretty small individually but there were a lot of them and I didn't fancy my chances if they all ganged up on me. They seemed placid enough though at the moment, and other people were getting a lot closer to them than I was, so I kept an eye on them but didn't panic.

Then though, when everything was going so well, I looked up accidentally and had to grip the seat below me with both hands. One of those waves of fear ran through me at all that distance and me not clipped onto anything. I was glad I was sitting down, I'd had a couple of similar moments on the walk and had barely resisted falling to the ground in terror and trying to dig my fingers into the cracks between the paving slabs.

My good mood faded as suddenly as it had arrived and I dropped right from elation down to despair. Even my good mood of the moment before was retrospectively tarnished. This was where these people came to relax and I could barely take five minutes of it without duck panic and mind crippling vertigo.

Clenching my jaw and clasping my bench I had to stay put for a while. I'd fallen into a degree of suit discipline through habit when I left my front door. So although I wanted to cry my eyes stayed completely dry because leaking tears into a suit is a really bad idea. When I'd to an extent regained my composure I decided dejectedly that maybe this was enough of an adventure for the day. I could come back and try again tomorrow.

I stood up carefully and took a step forward preparing for the walk home but then out of the corner of my eye I saw a large object, a person, coming very fast towards me and reflexively I leaned back. Only a jogger I recognised belatedly, nothing to worry about. But by that point my balance was gone beyond recovery and I slipped, twisting my right foot as I fell back against the kerb.

I swear I heard the snap of my ankle breaking just before the pain hit, sound travels a lot faster than nerve impulses but over that distance the sickening crack was still only a fraction of a second ahead of the nervous overload of searing agony. Presumably I cried out, I couldn't tell you for sure but I'd be amazed if I didn't. Then I was lying on the stone path looking sideways at the world. In the distance my view was filled with the terrible swarming, crawling motion of hundreds of ducks and I wondered whether they would come for me now that they could see I was injured.

"Hey, are you OK?" said a female voice from my side, oh right, the jogger. I looked over away from the path to see a concerned face looking across at me. Down on me I mean, sorry.

"Not really, I broke my leg." I said unhappily, "I don't know how I'm going to get home. Even if the ducks don't eat me."

My words obviously gave her pause for thought as her face became decidedly wary and she even took a precautionary step back. After a moment of consideration though all paths apparently led in the same direction.

"I'll call an ambulance for you."

"No wait, there's a number, you need to call them." I flapped the medical alert pennant around my neck at her.

Limentina
Limentina
370 Followers