His earlier visit to the wall hadn't... ended well. Distractions, Finch sums up crisply to himself. And he'd meant to return promptly, to place a note on the wall, but there had been further distractions, and, well, one thing and another-- it was surprisingly time-consuming to try and adjust to surreal dreamscape that was supposedly an alien artifact-- and... he hadn't made it back to the wall.
And then gravity and light had stopped being reliable.
(The issue of darkness had almost been a comfort: not the darkness itself, but the chance to do something productive, to take control of his environment in some fashion, however trivial. Finch had ascertained that if the ship-issued comm had a 'light-up' function, it was somewhat inaccessible (for now), and had instead turned to his own cellphone, glad now of having turned it off earlier to conserve the battery. He'd used the cellphone's glow to illuminate a search for a more durable light source-- there were those glowing crystals at the park, could they be used to..... [Short answer: yes, yes they could.] )
Finch had a lantern, now. It was a strange thing, and he could not help but feel something like a character out of a novel, holding to light his way: it was a pretty thing too, a faceted cylinder of a thin transparent substance (organic, he thought, albeit with reservations-- it had been growing in tube-like formations by one of the ponds), and several blue-shining crystals inside. They reacted with water, and that reaction was to glow. Not overpoweringly, but enough to see by. So: his lantern, held together with strips of copper wire, sloshing gently with water, sending out a cerulean radiance over the dark, strange dreamscape of the ship's tunnels...
Gravity had been trickier. There was something marvelous about it, when it got light: to step without the jarring weight of the world on his bad hip and bad knee. Even though his calculating brain observed the risks of true weightlessness, it was hard to be scared of being light as air.
(Heavy was... another thing. A wretched thing.)
Finch was in the process of returning to the Wall, several notes prepared, when the lights went out. He had let out a grunt, almost satisfied for the chance to have his lantern be useful. He'd counted the steps, unwilling to come across the Wall in the dark (god what a hideous thought), and he'd made a careful, unhurried way through the corridor of smells...
And then the lights had come back on, and Finch had relaxed somewhat-- until he saw a figure some fifty feet ahead, crouched at the base of the wall.
"Don't touch it!" he calls-- but in time to be heard?
no subject
And then gravity and light had stopped being reliable.
(The issue of darkness had almost been a comfort: not the darkness itself, but the chance to do something productive, to take control of his environment in some fashion, however trivial. Finch had ascertained that if the ship-issued comm had a 'light-up' function, it was somewhat inaccessible (for now), and had instead turned to his own cellphone, glad now of having turned it off earlier to conserve the battery. He'd used the cellphone's glow to illuminate a search for a more durable light source-- there were those glowing crystals at the park, could they be used to..... [Short answer: yes, yes they could.] )
Finch had a lantern, now. It was a strange thing, and he could not help but feel something like a character out of a novel, holding to light his way: it was a pretty thing too, a faceted cylinder of a thin transparent substance (organic, he thought, albeit with reservations-- it had been growing in tube-like formations by one of the ponds), and several blue-shining crystals inside. They reacted with water, and that reaction was to glow. Not overpoweringly, but enough to see by. So: his lantern, held together with strips of copper wire, sloshing gently with water, sending out a cerulean radiance over the dark, strange dreamscape of the ship's tunnels...
Gravity had been trickier. There was something marvelous about it, when it got light: to step without the jarring weight of the world on his bad hip and bad knee. Even though his calculating brain observed the risks of true weightlessness, it was hard to be scared of being light as air.
(Heavy was... another thing. A wretched thing.)
Finch was in the process of returning to the Wall, several notes prepared, when the lights went out. He had let out a grunt, almost satisfied for the chance to have his lantern be useful. He'd counted the steps, unwilling to come across the Wall in the dark (god what a hideous thought), and he'd made a careful, unhurried way through the corridor of smells...
And then the lights had come back on, and Finch had relaxed somewhat-- until he saw a figure some fifty feet ahead, crouched at the base of the wall.
"Don't touch it!" he calls-- but in time to be heard?