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Tonight's dinner conversation did not revolve around engineering or politics. No, it revolved around Leia. Esifwu gave first a quick summary, then a detailed explanation of the day's discoveries, which made Leia horribly uncomfortable. The first response was disbelief, which dissipated quickly in the face of details. The second response was shock. It took Leia a while to figure out what the shocking part of the story was, but eventually she concluded it was the person-from-an-unknown world. Certainly that was the part of the story that people kept coming back to. As Esifwu promised, there were immediate, specific offers of just about anything Leia might want: special foods and beverages, entertainment not available to all through the ship-mind, education, friendship, sex. A couple of more persistent crew members got slapped by the people sitting next to them at the table until they subsided.
Once everyone settled down, they all wanted to know everything she could tell about where she was from. After several minutes of awkward attempts at describing her home – home world, home town, apartment, family, pets, etc. - Esifwu asked if the crew could access the data from the ship-mind's attempts to learn her language and teach their shared language. Leia agreed immediately, and the rest of dinner went very, very quickly, which was a relief.
With everyone else gone to interface with the ship-mind and drink down all this lovely new information, Esifwu and Leia sat at the dinner table, quietly finishing their meal at a more normal pace.
After dinner, Esifwu and Leia went separate ways. Leia sat back down in front of the screen and tried to continue where she had left off. But Esifwu had made a lot of changes. It wasn't really like Rosetta Stone anymore. While the screen had wanted her to provide her language (spoken and written) before, it had exclusively responded to her with pictures or what Leia thought of as the Target Language, which was enormously frustrating when trying to digest some detail of anatomy or something that might be new notation for mathematics she already knew, or might be some entirely new mathematical concept, if she could figure out what the hell she was supposed to be understanding.
With the anatomy and math and physics and so forth now, the ship-mind was giving her a lot of choices: Target Language, ship-mind's current understanding of English, pure pictures, etc. And she could hear herself talk or read text, Target Language or English.
Just fiddling with the new choices took an hour.
Once she found the history, she settled in. As usual, the ship-mind spent the first several minutes trying to assess her comprehension and interest before settling into a more uniform (or at least slowly progressive) presentation. It settled on a video collage of contemporary video documentation (think evening news coverage, but obviously not precisely) with closed captioning and a lot of hyperlinks, split into short chapters with a primary linear narrative structure and a tree-like array of secondary options. Addictive didn't even begin to cover it. Leia wasn't entirely certain how long she'd been sitting there when it quit responding and Esifwu's face replaced the history module. "Enough! Either go get some sleep or come over here. We're having a small party and you are welcome to join us." Esifwu's face disappeared and was replaced with a map showing Leia how to get to her compartment. Or the compartment where the party was being held. Or whatever. It wasn't anywhere Leia had been, but it looked simple enough. When she stepped out into the hall, the ship-mind lit a directional indicator in the wall for her. That was helpful; probably more of Esifwu providing extra support for her once she realized she couldn't assume Leia knew anything at all.
The compartment was about the size of the dining room, and Leia could now recognize the small plaques on the wall that indicated where built-ins could be deployed. She supposed something like foosball would drop down if you picked the right one and wondered what it would be like here. Right now, everything was put away except some benches along the wall. Music was playing at a level compatible with conversation if you were willing to get up-close-and-personal with someone else's ear. And about a dozen people were dancing. It wasn't as organized as line dancing, or the tango. It wasn't as free-form as a mosh pit. While there was some flexibility in the number of people dancing together, each number had it's own structure. Either that, or these people were brilliant improvisers and telepathic, too.
Esifwu grabbed her by the hand with a big grin, and pulled her into the fray. "I know you don't know how. I'll show you some of it. They'll kill me if I monopolize you, though, so I'll have to let them show you some, too." The first bit was like a box step, but without touching your partner(s), and wasn't a square. The next bit could have been a boot scoot, although not any version Leia had seen, since this one did involve partner contact. Then Leia got handed off to Baylen, who Leia had decided was (one of) Esifwu's ex's, and Ysbo, the woman who was really, really, really into Baylen now. What Baylen and Ysbo did with her might have been a Reel, but probably wasn't. It just got less recognizable from there. But Leia had a lot of fun, more fun than she ever remembered having at any dance, whether middle school, prom, friends' weddings or clubs. The man who rescued her, Radmer, participated in a foursome with her that was, fortunately, very simple.
Leia's head was about to explode from the unfamiliar difficulty of remembering all the different moves and the order in which they were supposed to be executed. Also, she was getting breathless and a bit warm when Esifwu pulled her away from the next group about to claim her. "Something to drink?" Esifwu asked, and handed over a cup of water without waiting for a response. She steered Leia to the drinks panel and let her pick her own after that and then pointed at a table already occupied by three people Leia was fairly certain she'd danced with tonight, but not met previously. About halfway through her about-as-strong-as-wine-but-tasted-more-like-beer, Leia felt a wave of sleepiness. Esifwu grinned at her and suggested she go sleep. The room was about halfway down from its peak and people were heading out the door, so Leia nodded, remembered the correct formula for good-night, and found her sleeping pod, crawled in, and slept like the dead, for a few hours, but not the entire night.
Instead, about halfway through the night, she woke up screaming, sure she was falling, just as she had after the door opened and Radmer pulled her out of the broken hallway into the open space between the two ships. She wasn't falling, but she couldn't figure out why she was in a claustrophic bed-sized tube with absolutely no light or sound. By the time she'd figured that out, she couldn't come up with any reason to stop panicking, because she realized, down in her bones, for the first time, that while she might have a safe place to sleep (comparatively), enough food, and whatever other basic needs, she wasn't going to talk to anyone in English ever again.
She wouldn't see the leaves in the fall in New England. Ever again.
She'd never snorkel in the warm waters of Hawaii. Ever again.
Never hike up to Lake Twenty-two and go for a bone-chilling swim on a hot August day.
No more sunsets in Moab. Never walk the Strip in Vegas to see the latest crazy architecture. Never. No. More.
There could be centuries of firsts for her, but the door to the past was locked and bolted, chained to a lump of cement and dumped into an ocean trench.
Gone. Might as well scream forever.
Seeing Esifwu's worried face got through briefly, but what did she matter? Why care about her when she'd never see anyone she'd ever cared for again?
Then the dim light in the blackness went away with the gentle forcefulness of really effective sedation.
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Copyright Rebecca Allen, 2012.
Created: July 9, 2012 Updated: July 9, 2012