Starship Walker

Abel's Walk

In her small West Side cabin at the half-G level of the wheel, Gillian awoke and lay still in her bunk, listening to the sounds of the Xinglong Hao. She had never experienced complete silence on board a spaceship, and even back home on Mars. Fans hummed on and off to keep the air moving and prevent stagnant areas developing. Pumps chattered and whined, transferring water around the spinning section of the ship to keep the wheel in balance. As soon as a crowd of people moved together in the same direction, a pump somewhere would start muttering. At times the ship creaked and groaned like an old wooden sailing vessel, often when it was near a sun and its exterior surfaces began to warm up.

And always, louder or softer, there was the murmur of voices.

Gillian had grown up in such surroundings, and was accustomed to living in sealed environments. All the careful design, the provision of large open spaces with limited surveillance cameras, the varying decor, distraction via the ship news and entertainment channels, meant little to her. Its attempt to conceal the reality, that everyone was sealed in an airtight pen, seemed irrational to Gillian. It was an attempt to address the problems of Earth folk, and not relevant to her.

Light from a rectangle on one side of her living space flickered across the opposite walls. The ship's news channel was on, and she had just watched scenes of herself and Abel, walking in the rim park, talking. But now she had turned down the sound and reclined on her bunk, wanting to relax. Gillian attempted to make her mind quiet, to think of nothing. But instead, she saw the gorgeous splashes of star fields and delicate nebula from her simulated Walk yesterday. Abel had reminded her that this was a limited representation of the reality out there, focussed on assisting navigation. But it was still beautiful.

It was time to prepare. Abel was Walking today, with an audience, and this would be her first official appearance as the ship's alternative Walker. Gillian snapped her fingers to switch the screen off, then jumped from her bunk, brought up the cabin light with a gesture and pushed her bunk into the wall. She showered in the tiny cubicle, then cleaned her nails and brushed her hair. She put on a one-piece jumpsuit, and checked her appearance in the mirror, examining her face with care. It seemed calm, composed and mature: the appearance she wanted.

She left her little cabin to return to the Navigation centre.

Out in the West Side wheel, the decor had undergone one of its periodic changes. Most walls were now a soft shade of yellow, muted with white flashes, the floors and ceilings a neutral grey with darker symmetric patterns. In some locations, there were changing exotic images from Earth, a place she had never visited.

Gillian edged her way by an air filter cleaning team who were dismantling part of the corridor ceiling, their faces hidden behind respirators. She noticed one of the cleaning team members glance at her. Gillian turned her own face away, holding a hand against her mouth and nose to avoid any floating bacteria or mold.

Every skin flake, hair strand, or perspiration droplet finished up in the air filters. Nanobots were only eighty percent successful in cleaning them. All passengers were assigned tasks in the cleaning schedule. They checked dark locations and recesses, scrubbing out accumulated dirt and grime. They inspected and replaced air filters. Specialist crew members surveyed the gathered muck for novel bacteria and viruses.

As a Walker, now part of the crew, Gillian was no longer assigned to these rosters.

At the West Side elevator bank, she threaded her way through a team of rim runners and mothers with kids in strollers, aware of but ignoring their curious glances. Waiting to go down to the rim, she fidgeted, nervous and impatient, keeping her eyes straight ahead, anxious to avoid the gaze of strangers. So far, she had not been approached by those odd elements of humanity urged to put forward eccentric visions of the universe, or give absurd advice.