Ricki Tarr (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rickitikitarr) wrote2015-03-08 10:47 am
rickitikitarr) wrote2015-03-08 10:47 am
1. video
[Ricki Tarr, latest inmate arrival, is still getting his feet under him. He's been on board for a little while now, but let's face it, he's a field agent from the 1970s, getting used to graphical user interfaces of his messenger has put up a bit of a roadblock in terms of his making contact.
By the time he's confident enough with the flimsy, cheeping little device to make a video post, his stomach is growling, so the very first message is a simple video shot.
It's poorly framed, he has no real idea of how to centre himself in the lens, and the light in his room is dark and low and terrible for any sort of filming. But from the dark, what's visible of his half-in-the-frame expression is still and steady;]
The first living creature to orbit the earth was a little Russian mongrel named Laika. She was a pretty thing, with a clever cast to her eyes and pricked up, pointed ears. On the fourtieth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution they flung the little thing into the sky.
In fact, the Russians had been launching dogs into suborbital flights for a few years before, but none attained the notoriety or captured the imaginations of the world like little Laika. I was rather young when she was sent to space, but recall thinking the entire proceedings terribly inhumane.
The Soviets say that she was euthanized before her oxygen ran out. The British and Americans question whether that is true. The Russians question whether that questioning is deliberately spread propaganda meant to make them seem monstrous. In the time since, I think both sides have lost track of the original truth of the matter. But the question of her ultimate cause of death aside, I wondered whether she might be hungry, thirsty or afraid, uncomprehending of how it was possible to see stars all around her... I actually can't recall reading whether Sputnik 2 was like this ship, with windows or not. Laika may not have seen stars spinning in the sky, but I'm sure the sounds and sudden lack of gravity must have been rather frightening for such a little dog.
[His voice is low and steady, the pictures his paints are matter-of-fact and vivid. He accent is an odd, old one, London tempered by a childhood racing through Penang streets and other colonial holds. He takes his time with the story before concluding;]
Which is all to say, given the apparent flexibility of space and time on this vessel, if we see her while we're out here, I must simply insist that we make a stop.
By the time he's confident enough with the flimsy, cheeping little device to make a video post, his stomach is growling, so the very first message is a simple video shot.
It's poorly framed, he has no real idea of how to centre himself in the lens, and the light in his room is dark and low and terrible for any sort of filming. But from the dark, what's visible of his half-in-the-frame expression is still and steady;]
The first living creature to orbit the earth was a little Russian mongrel named Laika. She was a pretty thing, with a clever cast to her eyes and pricked up, pointed ears. On the fourtieth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution they flung the little thing into the sky.
In fact, the Russians had been launching dogs into suborbital flights for a few years before, but none attained the notoriety or captured the imaginations of the world like little Laika. I was rather young when she was sent to space, but recall thinking the entire proceedings terribly inhumane.
The Soviets say that she was euthanized before her oxygen ran out. The British and Americans question whether that is true. The Russians question whether that questioning is deliberately spread propaganda meant to make them seem monstrous. In the time since, I think both sides have lost track of the original truth of the matter. But the question of her ultimate cause of death aside, I wondered whether she might be hungry, thirsty or afraid, uncomprehending of how it was possible to see stars all around her... I actually can't recall reading whether Sputnik 2 was like this ship, with windows or not. Laika may not have seen stars spinning in the sky, but I'm sure the sounds and sudden lack of gravity must have been rather frightening for such a little dog.
[His voice is low and steady, the pictures his paints are matter-of-fact and vivid. He accent is an odd, old one, London tempered by a childhood racing through Penang streets and other colonial holds. He takes his time with the story before concluding;]
Which is all to say, given the apparent flexibility of space and time on this vessel, if we see her while we're out here, I must simply insist that we make a stop.
Video
A good many animals died in space, sacrificed on the altar of scientific achievement. Not all of 'em got a statue in their honor.
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[A small cameo on the Monument to the Conquerors of space that he doesn't know about, but not the big one- not yet, in Ricki's day and age.]
Not on our side of the pond, at least. Did the Americans mount something up that I didn't hear about?
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[Total puzzlement. But, maybe it was when he was in deep Hong Kong- that was almost five years back, now.]
Wasn't spring of 71', was it?
[His best bets for periods of time he just... missed.]
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[And several more hair raising things in Malay, if he happens to speak it. Right, yes, it's going to be the little things that throw him.]
-they weren't kidding about the time travel thing?
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[Boyd had already noted the discrepancy between their time periods, considering the apparent age of this guy and the first animal space flights, which he knew were mostly back in the fifties.]
This ain't hardly nothin', this twenty years or so between your time and mine. There are people here from three hundred years previous and hence.
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Ricki has already ruled out going crazy. What strikes him now is that he's on dreaming or on the worst trip of his life. The barely lucid shift between space and boat and back again seems like evidence in favour of this theory. He frequently has dreams where one moment he's climbing the Eiffel Tower and the next he's leapt off the top to land in a soft-as-clouds bed back in Istanbul, incongruities that don't seem to matter, but given that it doesn't seem to want to end it's growing less and less likely. He's also not usually shy about hard drugs, either, but this really doesn't feel that candy-coloured sort of familiar.
Not crazy, not dreaming, and probably not high...]
Wow.
[He's normally quicker than this, really he is.]
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Boyd Crowder, inmate.
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Quite the amount to swallow.
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[And what is there to do at that except blink. And;]
I hear there's a bar?
[Might not be a bad first step.]
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[Getting slowly to his feet.]
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[Silver linings, or something.]