Catch-Up [2430-2-2-Wed-3pm]

[Cassandra Nida]

Cass stood up, smiling a little. "Caden was a good mechanic... but maybe not the best instructor." Before he had left, he and Cass had some good conversations about her limbs. He knew his stuff, and they'd spoken at length about the technology in use, and the problems that had cropped up when developing prosthetics meant not just to fill basic functions, but high level functions as well. But knowing stuff wasn't the same as being able to teach someone else.

She wasn't entirely sure if she could be a teacher, but Cass felt pretty confident she could teach Olive at least a few basic things. Cass headed back towards the engine room, sipping on her protein drink as they walked. "I'm going to show you the major parts of the engine, and then the easiest way to kick-start it if the ignition in the cabin isn't working. You probably won't ever need to know this, but.... just in case something really bad happens and control gets messed up, then you can at least get us away from a bad situation."

[Olive]

"He got really excited about mechy stuff, and then went on long speeches and I never understood any word of it," Olive agreed. She'd decided to stop inquiring about the inner workings of the ship after he once described the mechanics of the entire cooling system on the ship... before she could even ask what a cooling system was. She still wasn't quite sure what a cooling system was.

Olive followed Cass towards the back of the ship, hoping she could be a better teacher since she knew how to talk to Olive as a friend already. "So like... what kinda bad things would happen to make me need to know how do this stuff? Cause even if Solomon doesn't really know much, he's gotta know more than me..."

[Cassandra Nida]

"Well..." Cass hesitated, not sure how dark to go. She didn't want to scare Olive. But she had to understand that there was a chance something bad could happen. "If we got attacked by somebody bad, and maybe I was unconscious-" or dead she thought, "- and I couldn't help out, but we needed to get away as soon as possible, but something was wrong with the engine, then maybe you could fix it if it was simple and get us moving again, and somewhere safe."

Cass let herself into the engine room, trying to decide where to begin. It had to be simple. Forget life support systems, even if they were important too. Unless air was venting, they wouldn't matter for at least four or five hours, and if air was venting... well, that was probably too big to fix. So the engines were the obvious choice. Time to see how much of a beginner Olive really was, "Olive, do you know how an engine works?"

[Olive]

Olive wanted to ask why they would get attacked, or even how they could get attacked in the middle of space, but she had a feeling that the conversation would only get worse if she kept asking questions about not so happy sounding answers. Getting attacked and the possibility of Cass being unconscious was already not the kinds of things she wanted to hear.

She followed Cass down the walkway and into the engine room. Olive didn't go in there much, since she had no idea what anything was and that tended to pique her curiosity, which tended to lead her to touching things. Which tended to get her yelled at. Not to mention how loud and stinky it could be. On the other hand, it was likely one of the warmest places on the ship, and Olive definitely appreciated that.

She shook her head at Cass' question. "I didn't even know what an engine was before I got on the ship..."

[Cassandra Nida]

Okay, so Cass was going to have to be really, really simple. She composed her thoughts, and started to speak, “Okay, engines are pretty simple. They look really complicated, but they aren’t. Think of them… think of them like a person!”

“Just like people, they need to eat. Only they use fuel instead of food.” Cass pointed to the great big pipes bringing the fuel into the engine. “Those pipes there are full of fuel, and they send it straight into the engine. Inside the engine, there’s a combustion area – that’s the engine’s stomach. The fuel goes there and gets lit on fire. That produces energy to turn the turbines-” Cass gestured to the large sections of the engine, now so quiet, but usually whirling away like mad during take-off or set-down. “-and the turbines are sort like the ship’s legs. They produce the thrust we use to move around with. It also powers the whole ship, but that’s mostly a bonus.”

“Up there is the compressor, that’s where the air comes in because the engine needs air to make the fuel combust.” She traced the path of the compressor, and the air cyclers. “Air also gets cleaned up there, so when dirty air comes out of the engine, it goes there and gets scrubbed, and then we can breathe it, and the engine can keep using it to make the engine run more.”

Cass knew there was so much more to cover, but that was probably more than enough for Olive to grasp. “So, when the ship isn’t working, it’s usually because of one of three things. Either there’s no fuel, and it’s too hungry to move. Or there’s no air, and it can’t breathe. Or somebody’s really hurt the engine, in which case… there’s nothing you can do. But if it’s air or fuel, you can do something about them.”

[Olive]

As Cass described the ship like a person, it suddenly felt like a light went on in her head. It made perfect sense. People got grouchy when they didn't eat. Especially Sol. Also sometimes, people got sick when they didn't eat, and that was even worse than just grouchy, because sometimes also people got grouchy when they were sick, so it was like double grouchy.

She vaguely recalled Solomon "re-fueling" in Antheia, but she hadn't really known what that had meant. Now she could picture him feeding the ship a sandwich, and she bit back a giggle as she looked around the engine room some more. "Okay... it makes more sense now. Kinda. But like... if the engine is a stomach, does that mean we're in the ship's guts??"

[Cassandra Nida]

"Um... well, yeah. Yeah, we are in the ship's guts." Cass looked around the engineering room. It wasn't too different really. Instead of blood, there was oil, and pipes instead of arteries, and a motor instead of a heart, and the list went on of replacements. "I mean, it's not exactly the same, but... yeah. If a ship is a person, then we're sorta in the torso. Right in here." She moved her hand up and down her torso, between the stomach and heart.

"Okay, so here's what you really need to know if the engine isn't working. First you need to make sure the engine is getting enough to eat." Cass easily climbed up the side of the still engine, her servos quietly whining as she climbed up about ten feet off the ground. She pressed one hand one the fuel intake valves, tracing the lines for Olive, "You need to check to make sure these aren't leaking. If they are, you have to tape them up, like you would if somebody cut themselves. It won't fix them, but it'll stop them from leaking too badly to keep the engine running."

Cass made her way over to the fuel tanks, easily navigating the engine room terrain. Now that her limbs were back to tip-top shape, it was easy for her to jump across the gaps accurately, and climb across the pipes. It was also easier to do this now that the engine wasn't running. She still could have done it then, but the heat would have melted her skin, and she would have needed to shut down all her 'feeling' sensors. Cass ended up back near the base of the tank, showing Olive where the front display was. "This tells you how much fuel is left, and if the pump is working. If the pump isn't working, there's a manual pump right here." She opened another access panel, showing Olive the hand-pump, "If the pump's broken, you having to feed the engine using this. It's slow and hard to use, so only pump in enough to get the engine going. Once we've got momentum, we can cut the engines and just drift through space until we fix the real pump, or somebody comes to rescue us."

[Olive]

"Bandage it up, or turn the pump thingy. Got it," Olive nodded, trying her best to store that knowledge away in her brain. She hoped that she would never need it, though. The idea that there was the possibility of Olive being the only one left to save the ship was still an uncomfortable thought. That meant everyone else was hurt, or worse. Could it really happen? She banished the thought from her mind.

She was, however, quite intrigued with Cass' climbing all over the engine. She hadn't even seen Caden do it with quite that level of ease, and he had seemed to know exactly what he was doing. "Wow if I didn't know any better I'd think you were part faun!" she grinned.

[Cassandra Nida]

Cass couldn’t stop the little smile that came across her face at what Olive said. “You know, I could have faun legs. I’d just need the parts to build them.” It would be very expensive, and she would have to learn to walk in them, but… that could be neat. There was no reason Cass couldn’t build a whole assortment of specialized limbs one day. Right now, she’d settle for dreaming about having light limbs again, instead of the heavy-duty ones.

She turned back to the engine, “So, that’s how you fix it if there’s a fuel problem. If there’s an air problem, you need to get it breathing again. The first thing you do it check the air cycler.” Cass headed over to the cycler, sitting in the corner. She pointed to the lights on the front, “If any of these are red, you hit this button right here and it’ll try to fix itself. And if there are still lights on after that, just read the labels and it’ll tell you what’s wrong.”

Cass pointed to the ‘intake clogged’ button, “This is the one you’ll see most. That means that something’s stuck in the cycler and the air isn’t moving. Like…. Like if you started choking on food or something. You need to pry open this panel here, and pull out whatever’s blocking it.” She put her hands on the access panel on the side of the cycler. “Yank out as much of it as you can, and hit the big button again, and it’ll try fix itself. You’ll know as soon as it works because this will make a loud humming noise, and start sucking in air.”

[Olive]

Olive's brain was definitely stuck on the "I could have faun legs" part of anything Cass said, the rest of it going completely over her head after that. Could she really?? Olive had seen Cass working on her arm once, and it was all metal and shiny inside, just like the ship. She'd now spent enough time on the space station and hanging around the docks to watch enough repairs happening to ships to discover how easy it was to trade one part of a ship for another one just like it. Was Cass enough like a ship that she could do that? Could she get new legs??? That would be so cool!!

She snapped back to reality, realizing Cass was still talking about the ship. She blinked, feeling a little guilty about not paying attention. "Uhhhmm..." she stated, finally interrupting Cass. "I'm still trying to remember the first stuff you told me. Maybe we should take a break for now..."

[Cassandra Nida]

“Oh! Oh, it’s okay. We’ll take a break.” Cass reminded herself that she couldn’t push Olive too far. She was still learning after all. “I can write some of this down too, with step by step instructions. Then even if you don’t remember everything, you can read the instructions and know what to do next.”

It was strange. A few weeks ago, Cass would have been sure that she would have hated trying to teach Olive anything. But Cass had discovered that she had more patience than she’d thought possible. In a way, all the horrible things that had happened had done some good. If she hadn’t had to run away, she would have never made a friend with someone like Olive, or met a boy like Klove, or done any of the things she’d done. Some of it had been scary, and she still cried sometimes when she thought about her dad, but it turned out that Cassandra wasn’t nearly as fragile as she’d thought she was.

She took another peek at the engine to make sure her repair job was holding. Cass trusted her own handiwork, but it didn’t hurt to be extra careful when it came to a big engine like this. Everything looked good, and she nodded to herself. Then she glanced back at Olive, “Do you think Solomon’s okay? You’ve known him a lot longer than me, and he’s been kinda… ever since Magdalen disappeared…”

[Olive]

"Yeah write it down! Then I can read it a few times. Can you draw pictures too? ...do we even have paper on the ship??" Olive quickly remembered that humans didn't use paper much any more, what with their no trees and their fancy computer padd things. Could someone draw pictures on a computer? she wondered to herself. She'd been allowed to play with Sol's eInkr, but only when he'd given her specific jobs to use it for, such as keeping track of the crew members on the first day.

"He's always kinda like that," Olive nodded to Cass' question. "But yeah, even more so now." She sat down on a nearby stool. "He really liked her. I think he's really worried about what happened. And about us too, cause we're stuck here, you know?" She rested her chin in her hands. "I wish we just stayed on Antheia and never left to begin with. Our lives were boring there, but it was so easy and happy. And... not so metal." She tapped a hoof on the floor, listening to it clang against the grating.

[Cassandra Nida]

"Paper?" Cass couldn't understand why Olive was asking if they had paper. What did drawing and paper have to do with each other? And then she realized that Olive meant for Cass to draw the pictures on the paper, "Oh! We don't need paper! I can draw lots of pictures on my eInkr and send you the file, and then you can watch it on anything. It's really easy, and I make the drawings a lot more accurate that way."

Cass understood where Olive was coming from. There were plenty of times she woke up and wished she was still at home in her bed, with the workshop so close and her dad out in the living room, holding conference calls with his employees. But there was no way to return home, not while Cain was looking for her, and now while her dad was still being held by the authorities. She carefully reached up and wiped at her eyes, trying not to let it show, "Maybe things will get better? And if not, you can always go back home. Antheia isn't all that far away from here."

[Olive]

"Oh okay!" Olive nodded. That confirmed her suspicions about the drawing on a computer thing. "I guess you can send it to Sol's eInkr and I'll borrow it! Maybe one day I'll get my own. I think we need more money first though..."

Olive knew Cass was just trying to make everything seem better than it was, but it wasn't really working. "Aw come on, that's silly. Antheia is really far from here. Like... you couldn't ever walk there far. Even if you could breathe in space..."

[Cassandra Nida]

Cass thought to her own padd, which had been given to her by Klove. That was before she had realized how expensive things really were. She hoped he hadn’t gotten in trouble from his captain for that, “Yeah. Maybe if we take the job, we can make some money. But that’s up to the Solomon, and if he hires the pilot he’s been talking to.”

“It’s not that far! Not by ship. And… and if worse came to worse, you guys could sell this ship and buy a ride home on somebody else’s ship,” You couldn’t see outside of the ship from the engine room, but there were hundreds of thousands of ships on the Underworld. There were even a few places that just ran shuttles to different planets constantly. Maybe the other stuff on board wasn’t exactly legal, but it was still passage, “You won’t be stuck here forever. If you and Sol really want to go home, you can.” She didn’t include herself in that statement. Cass knew better. She didn’t have a home to go back to.