We got fitted for our wardrobes today. Two very kind Senfte
were in charge of the fitting, with a Gadhavi manager overseeing and taking
copious notes. We got a sneak peak at what we’ll be wearing, too. The suits
look a lot like the bio-suits worn by the asteroid miners – mainly gray, with
pale blue tubing to represent Breathe Easy’s color scheme. We have light gray
suits made of carbon-silk layers with elastic cords throughout for our weeks in
space; this suit is designed to keep our bodies from atrophying as much as
possible, since we will not only be in near zero gravity on the moon, and
between Moon Base and Rabbah, but while we are on the surface of Europa as
well, working on making Rabbah inhabitable. That would put us at nearly 6 weeks
in 0 g, which won’t render us unable to live in normal conditions forever, but
it would mean we’d have to focus on retraining our bodies to exist in gravity.
I know that there were some early astronauts that lived weightless in space, or the upper atmosphere, for up to a year at a time, just to see what the effect would be. What a cruel government experiment. At least, with the Amendment to Structured Society, we know what each life is worth, and businesses can determine whether they want to risk that loss or not. Most have decided that maintaining a healthy workforce is more worthwhile, so now we all have decent housing and food, and medical care.
We have another suit, as well, for the time when we finally descend into Rabbah and get near 1 g of force again. I’m told that most of the pressure will not come from gravity as we think of it, from the pull of the planetary mass itself, but from the pressure of being under so much water. These suits are darker gray, and with the pale blue, I think they look very classy.
We were then escorted to our own, personal cafeteria – built just for colonists to help them socialize – with a recording of a copper-skinned Arany representative. His soothing voice lightened my footsteps, and I hardly noticed the other women who moved against my shoulders, in unison with the beat of his dulcet tones.
We sat down to a huge meal, full of fresh fruit, bread, and tofu for protein. A slew of colorful sauces graced the table. One woman – I think her name is Ghadir, and she has short-cropped ashy brown hair, hardly attractive for a Senfte – cooed over the food. Most of us enjoyed it with appreciative nods, but had few words for what we ate.
I did notice that, although we are all one group, and many of us are casteless, we have begun to segregate ourselves by caste. I’m not sure how long this should last, but it is comfortable for now. I sat near the door, observing the other groups of women, with my fellow former Gadhavi. Chloe is particularly beautiful for a Gadhavi, with thick and shining black hair that she ties up in the most perfect twists and braids. Her makeup is always perfect as well, not a smudge or a line out of place. She admitted to me that she takes great pride in her appearance beyond workplace and mate-finding pride, and she took a thorough interest in the clothes her boss designed and manufactured.
Apparently, she used to be a personal assistant – like me – to an Arany fashion designer. She worked almost around the clock, making sure all of the Senfte and Bakalov workers were scheduled an appropriate number of hours, that fabrics had been ordered and were on their way in a timely fashion, that machines ran smoothly and were constantly stocked. At first, her pride in her appearance simply translated into spending her stipend at her employer’s store, which is nothing new for those that work in such a flamboyant industry. But eventually, she became interested in how the clothes were actually put together, how her employer thought to put certain patterns in place. She began studying her boss’s designs at night, “working” extra hours after everyone else had left. This was easily overlooked as enthusiasm, since she was the sole Gadhavi personal assistant for a busy shop.
Like me, she caught the eye of a man – this time, one who worked on a different floor of her office building. He would talk to her in the elevator in the morning, then as they ordered coffee at the same coffee stand, and finally as they had lunch together. She says that she liked him well enough, and decided it would be a good enough match to risk getting married. So they did.
She made one fatal mistake, however: she made her own wedding dress.
Her employer had offered to design a dress for her and sell it at merely the cost of materials, but Chloe said no. An unusual response to such a kind offer, of course, so she justified it by saying that her future husband had a dress in mind for her, and the romance inherent in the Arany heart allowed the soon-to-be bride to get away with her secret plan.
Chloe began stealing, in the tiniest bits and pieces, fabric from her shop. She sewed them together at night to get the hang of certain stitches, because hand stitching is no easy matter. Finally, “working late” again one evening, she put in an order for a mid-range silk, hoping that the store’s bank would not suspect almost a million missing dollars. Her employer almost never used that type of silk, designing as ze did for Arany movie stars and Hou families. But Chloe thought she could get away with it, because no one else in her office checked her work.
She was almost right, too. The bank, naturally run by meticulous Gadhavi and overenthusiastic Senfte, did not notice what they termed a “clerical error” for more than a year. By then, Chloe had finished the dress – almost bleeding out a few times from sticking sewing needles deep into her fingers – and walked down the aisle. She had been married for two months when a letter came to her office. “Urgent!” it said. “For the head of the finance department.”
Since that was Chloe, she opened it to discover that the bank had found the uncharacteristic spending pattern in the shop’s tax reporting. The bank wondered if the problem was known. They also offered a discount on fraud protection services.
Chloe ignored the letter for weeks, but eventually another one came, followed by another a mere week later. The bank was very concerned about the problem and wanted to ensure that their long-time, valued Arany customer knew about the issue. Chloe hid the letters and pretended like nothing had happened, but finally, a bank manager showed up and talked to her employer alone.
Chloe was fired, her husband sued for divorce, and her parents disowned her.
She said she was leaving the courthouse, after signing official de-casting papers, when she saw the advertisement from Breathe Easy slice across her vision. It said the company needed skilled people, regardless of caste. She began to obsess over her hand-sewing skills, and how that might translate into survival. Just two days before she was shipped off to the Bainbridge Araboa colony, her lawyer finalized a deal with Breathe Easy so that she would pay off her Debt to Society in a year.
She’s not looking forward to learning too many more skills, she says, and doesn’t like the idea of sweaty labor or getting dirt under her fingernails. But she sees potential in how our survival suits are designed, and thinks she could learn more useful information about the materials, how they work together, and how our suits could be improved. I hadn’t thought about it before, but we will probably need to repair tears and worn holes in our clothes. I’ve dealt with such things before, on my gardening clothes. Patches work fine for well-used, Earth-based clothing, but what about patching something on Rabbah? Or in space, for that matter?
She also has more direct experience with keeping books than I do, so that could be useful with shipping items to and from Earth. Someone will need to keep careful track of what we receive and how much raw water we send.
I think she will be a very interesting friend.
We depart for Moon Base tomorrow. I try to write something in the evening when we land.
I know that there were some early astronauts that lived weightless in space, or the upper atmosphere, for up to a year at a time, just to see what the effect would be. What a cruel government experiment. At least, with the Amendment to Structured Society, we know what each life is worth, and businesses can determine whether they want to risk that loss or not. Most have decided that maintaining a healthy workforce is more worthwhile, so now we all have decent housing and food, and medical care.
We have another suit, as well, for the time when we finally descend into Rabbah and get near 1 g of force again. I’m told that most of the pressure will not come from gravity as we think of it, from the pull of the planetary mass itself, but from the pressure of being under so much water. These suits are darker gray, and with the pale blue, I think they look very classy.
We were then escorted to our own, personal cafeteria – built just for colonists to help them socialize – with a recording of a copper-skinned Arany representative. His soothing voice lightened my footsteps, and I hardly noticed the other women who moved against my shoulders, in unison with the beat of his dulcet tones.
We sat down to a huge meal, full of fresh fruit, bread, and tofu for protein. A slew of colorful sauces graced the table. One woman – I think her name is Ghadir, and she has short-cropped ashy brown hair, hardly attractive for a Senfte – cooed over the food. Most of us enjoyed it with appreciative nods, but had few words for what we ate.
I did notice that, although we are all one group, and many of us are casteless, we have begun to segregate ourselves by caste. I’m not sure how long this should last, but it is comfortable for now. I sat near the door, observing the other groups of women, with my fellow former Gadhavi. Chloe is particularly beautiful for a Gadhavi, with thick and shining black hair that she ties up in the most perfect twists and braids. Her makeup is always perfect as well, not a smudge or a line out of place. She admitted to me that she takes great pride in her appearance beyond workplace and mate-finding pride, and she took a thorough interest in the clothes her boss designed and manufactured.
Apparently, she used to be a personal assistant – like me – to an Arany fashion designer. She worked almost around the clock, making sure all of the Senfte and Bakalov workers were scheduled an appropriate number of hours, that fabrics had been ordered and were on their way in a timely fashion, that machines ran smoothly and were constantly stocked. At first, her pride in her appearance simply translated into spending her stipend at her employer’s store, which is nothing new for those that work in such a flamboyant industry. But eventually, she became interested in how the clothes were actually put together, how her employer thought to put certain patterns in place. She began studying her boss’s designs at night, “working” extra hours after everyone else had left. This was easily overlooked as enthusiasm, since she was the sole Gadhavi personal assistant for a busy shop.
Like me, she caught the eye of a man – this time, one who worked on a different floor of her office building. He would talk to her in the elevator in the morning, then as they ordered coffee at the same coffee stand, and finally as they had lunch together. She says that she liked him well enough, and decided it would be a good enough match to risk getting married. So they did.
She made one fatal mistake, however: she made her own wedding dress.
Her employer had offered to design a dress for her and sell it at merely the cost of materials, but Chloe said no. An unusual response to such a kind offer, of course, so she justified it by saying that her future husband had a dress in mind for her, and the romance inherent in the Arany heart allowed the soon-to-be bride to get away with her secret plan.
Chloe began stealing, in the tiniest bits and pieces, fabric from her shop. She sewed them together at night to get the hang of certain stitches, because hand stitching is no easy matter. Finally, “working late” again one evening, she put in an order for a mid-range silk, hoping that the store’s bank would not suspect almost a million missing dollars. Her employer almost never used that type of silk, designing as ze did for Arany movie stars and Hou families. But Chloe thought she could get away with it, because no one else in her office checked her work.
She was almost right, too. The bank, naturally run by meticulous Gadhavi and overenthusiastic Senfte, did not notice what they termed a “clerical error” for more than a year. By then, Chloe had finished the dress – almost bleeding out a few times from sticking sewing needles deep into her fingers – and walked down the aisle. She had been married for two months when a letter came to her office. “Urgent!” it said. “For the head of the finance department.”
Since that was Chloe, she opened it to discover that the bank had found the uncharacteristic spending pattern in the shop’s tax reporting. The bank wondered if the problem was known. They also offered a discount on fraud protection services.
Chloe ignored the letter for weeks, but eventually another one came, followed by another a mere week later. The bank was very concerned about the problem and wanted to ensure that their long-time, valued Arany customer knew about the issue. Chloe hid the letters and pretended like nothing had happened, but finally, a bank manager showed up and talked to her employer alone.
Chloe was fired, her husband sued for divorce, and her parents disowned her.
She said she was leaving the courthouse, after signing official de-casting papers, when she saw the advertisement from Breathe Easy slice across her vision. It said the company needed skilled people, regardless of caste. She began to obsess over her hand-sewing skills, and how that might translate into survival. Just two days before she was shipped off to the Bainbridge Araboa colony, her lawyer finalized a deal with Breathe Easy so that she would pay off her Debt to Society in a year.
She’s not looking forward to learning too many more skills, she says, and doesn’t like the idea of sweaty labor or getting dirt under her fingernails. But she sees potential in how our survival suits are designed, and thinks she could learn more useful information about the materials, how they work together, and how our suits could be improved. I hadn’t thought about it before, but we will probably need to repair tears and worn holes in our clothes. I’ve dealt with such things before, on my gardening clothes. Patches work fine for well-used, Earth-based clothing, but what about patching something on Rabbah? Or in space, for that matter?
She also has more direct experience with keeping books than I do, so that could be useful with shipping items to and from Earth. Someone will need to keep careful track of what we receive and how much raw water we send.
I think she will be a very interesting friend.
We depart for Moon Base tomorrow. I try to write something in the evening when we land.
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