Welcome to the Machine [2430-2-1 Mon 9am]

[Blu]

The Underworld's spikey and sinister looks were ruined by the addition of Blu's silly looking umbrella to the large docking port near the trading centre. The gold semi-circle caught the light, even this far out, shining brightly and glittering as a thousand solar cells did their job. They looked even brighter alongside the assorted dark ships that had been fused together to make shops and hotels and homes.

However, Blu's silly ship was tolerated, mostly because Blu brought energy they badly needed. There was a crowd at the airlock, many of them carrying empty batteries from their last purchase. Blu gave discounts to anybody who returned the empty batteries, since it meant he didn't have to build more to replace the ones he was hanging out. There were always a few who didn't recycle, or who were buying his solar energy for the first time.

Blu didn't handle the actual selling. A man named Kris Hughes did it for Blu, since Blu found crowds to be too overwhelming, espeically on the Underworld. In exchange, Kris got his battery for free, a hell of a steal considering how much they normally cost. This left Blu free to do a quick inspection of the batteries being returned, so he'd know which ones were still working, and which would need to be rebuilt. He tied them together into rafts of twenty, and sent them floating up the umbrella's shaft to the engine room, where he'd hook them up to the chargers later. And Kris dealt with the money and the men who started arguing about things like price and discounts and all the bits that gave Blu a splitting headache.

As Blu floated the latest bundle up to the engine room, Vivian gave a ding. Somebody was awake and out of their room. They'd probably already discovered the gravity was off. He'd tried not to wake up either Sonya or Mai when he arrived, mostly because the battery thing was boring, and because they would have the rest of the day to see the Underworld. But now one of them was us.

"Hey Kris, my crew might be awake! Just keep stacking the batteries!" Blu called out to him. The crowd was still strong, but Blu's batteries were starting to thin out. It wouldn't be too long before they ran out.

Kris flashed him the okay sign, mid-argument with a large centaur about his own battery, which looked cracked. Blu had already turned it down, knowing just by looking at it that somebody had emptied it of all the worthwhile hardware and had put weights in to keep the centaur from being suspicious. Kris was now trying to get that across to the big guy.

Blu stepped into the shaft, feeling his stomach flip-flop a little as he went from gravity to weightlessness. He floated up the shaft, somersaulting at the half-way point and getting pointed in the right direction to the crew quarters. Gravity didn't kick on as the crew quarters opened and someone else came out. Couldn't risk hurting somebody who was putting their pants on (and Blu had learned that the hard way) or drop them two meters to the floor without any warning, unless you really wanted them to be mad at you for weeks.

[Sonya]

The gravity was off. Sonya noticed it as soon as she awoke. It was rather hard not to, considering that she woke up floating. She stretched and yawned, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. Arching her arms forward, she pulled herself into an upright position and glanced around the room quickly, trying to remember where she’d left her air canister the night before. After a few seconds, she noticed it floating next to the door. “How convenient.” She commented sleepily, grabbing the small metal canister and pressing the button to open the door.

Sonya floated out into the hallway, thinking of making breakfast and finding out why the entire ship’s gravity was off. Then again, she wasn’t even sure it was morning. She swam out into the Echo’s main junction and headed for the kitchens. The gravity was off there too, but Sonya barely noticed. She stood, or rather floated, stock still, staring out the kitchen’s grand picture window at the great city that was unfolding itself before her astonished eyes. "Wow." She murmured, "Wow. This is... incredible." Then unable to restrain herself any longer, Sonya hugged her arms to her chest and let out a piercing squeal of glee.

[Blu]

Sonya appeared in front of Blu, and he grinned and waved at he heard her squeal with delight. Then he realized that maybe she wasn't doing it for him. Oh right, the Underworld. Blu looked back at it. He was glad he'd made the halls clear. You could see everything so much better this way.

Too late, he realized he was getting way too close to Sonya. Blu went for his canister to slow himself down before he collided into her, but he was too late. At a slow and gentle speed, he bumped into her, and like ball-bearings, they both went spinning off in desperate directions.

Blu hit the side of the wall, jostling him a little. His glasses came off his face, and he scrambled for them, managing to slap them back down. "Morning!!" He shouted to the clearly still delighted Sonya. "We're on the Underworld now! Well, not really! We're just docked to it, but if you just go straight down, we'll be on it!!"

[Sonya]

Sonya gave a gasp of surprise as Blu collided with her, seemingly coming out of nowhere. “Oh, Hi!” She said cheerily when she had brought herself to a complete stop. “Is it morning? It’s hard to tell in space. In fact, it’s kinda messing with my head a bit.” She caught the rest of Blu’s sentence and grinned. “Are we really? It… It’s just amazing. I never thought I’d actually… That I’d ever really be here. For I while was afraid I’d never be anywhere but Corus. Boy would that have been a depressing experience. Never getting to see the worlds, or do anything, or be anyone at all. But I’m here now, and wow… It’s really just unbelievable.”

She could pretty much have gone on like that forever, but eventually Sonya trailed off and went back to simply staring out the window. She really couldn’t believe it. This was amazing, shocking, wonderful, and incredibly cool. This was the experience of a lifetime, and what was more, it was only the beginning.

[Blu]

"It gets easier with time!" Blu assured Sonya. He spent so much time in space that sometimes being planetside messed with his sense of time. It would take a couple of weeks for the mermaids to get used to everything, but hopefully after that, they'd adjust to seeing space outside instead of the sun.

Sonya trailed off, looking back at the Underworld. Blu smiled, taking in her joy. The space station was something to behold. Bigger than Blu's umbrella, bigger than any other spaceport (except for maybe Terra's), bigger than some of the smaller moons even.

"You'll get to see everything." He promised her, meaning every word of it. "Every world, every space station. We're going to go everywhere! But I have to go talk to Kris! If Mai wakes up, let her know we're here! I'm just going to be down there!" Blu pointed back down to the umbrella's base, hooked up to the airlock. "And watch out for the shipments of batteries I send up the shaft!!"

Blu got his air canister off his belt and headed back the way he was supposed to go, giving Sonya a wave as he headed down. Gravity took hold as he got near the base, and he landed on his feet, getting back to work.

[Mai]

The first thing Mai realized when she opened her eyes was that she was floating. It took her a moment to realize that that meant the gravity was turned off. She wasn't entirely sure why, because it didn't seem kind to turn it off on sleeping people and let them eventually bonk into something, but really she was still just trying to figure out the reason for all the playing with gravity on and off even when everyone was awake.

She twisted around, glancing at her room and sighing at her painting supplies floating all over the place. She was really going to have to get Blu to tell them when this was going to happen, so she could be prepared. Or rather, not touch the gravity in her room at all. She tried her best to locate where her air canister had floated off to, finally spotting it off to her left and flailing about to reach it. Legs really weren't as useful for swimming in water or air, she pondered, as she finally grabbed hold of the canister. She adjusted herself towards the door and propelled in it's direction, reaching down to hit the pad with her hand and swimming out into the hallway in search of the others.

[Sonya]

Time. Yes, everything got better with time, the most versatile thing in the universe. One moment, you could be running out of time, the way Sonya had been all those years on Corus, and the next you could feel perfectly relaxed, like she did now, because you had all the time in the world.

Sonya merely nodded as Blu spoke, still focused on the great city sprawled out before her, like a living breathing entity. The little bit she did catch, however, was music to her ears. She was going to travel, the way she’d always wanted to, and she was going to see all the worlds. Every single one. Before she died, she’d have made her mark on every patch of ground, every tree and rock in the entire solar system. But she needn’t worry about that now, after all, she had plenty of time.

She managed to tear herself away from the window long enough to wave to Blu as he departed. As she turned back to stare in wonder once more, she saw Mai coming up the hallway. Sonya swam over to the door and opened it, smiling at her fellow crew-member. “Morning!”

[Mai]

As Mai swam down the hallway with her air canister helping to propell her, she finally noticed the huge space station below them. She remembered Blu mentioning it was their first stop, and she couldn't help but pause to get a better look at it through the windows. It was like the space sport on Corus, all metal and technology, only much bigger, and far less pretty. She couldn't help but shiver a little at it's crude look, despite it being so huge and impressive.

She turned and swam over to the door as Sonya opened it. "Morning... why is all the gravity off?" She glanced back out the window for a moment. "...and... wow. Is that really that Underworld place?"

[Sonya]

“I don’t know about the gravity, but yeah, we’re really here!” Sonya did a somersault in midair, feeling absolutely ecstatic. “Isn’t it beautiful? It’s like an entire city just hanging there, I’ve never seen anything so amazing!” If it had been anybody else saying those things, Sonya would have laughed at them. She considered it stupid to admit that something amazed you. If you wanted to impress people, you had act like you’d seen it all before.

Yet Sonya always seemed to forget that whenever she encountered something strange and amazing. Everything else just sort of shut down, and she would ogle the thing like a child with a new toy. In a lot of ways, Sonya still was a child. So far, the highlight of her life had been her five-year old years. But of course, all that was about to change, had already begun to change. Sonya was becoming a whole new person.

And yet there was still a big part of her that wanted to go backward rather that forward in time. She wanted to be the old, old Sonya the lovable little kid she’d been before her stupid little brother came into the picture. Sonya shook her head to clear it, her brown curls bouncing slightly, as though moved by a soft breeze. In zero gravity her hair stuck out in all directions, making her look slightly insane, but Sonya just smiled, as of yet blissfully unaware of that fact.

[Blu]

The last bundle went up the shaft, Blu guiding it all the way up and collecting the other bundle that had gotten caught up on one of the walls on the way. It was easy to get them into the engine room, and into the battery carriers. Around him, the engines ran smoothly and nearly silently. They didn't need anybody to watch over them, except for maybe Vivian.

Kris had finished selling the last of batteries, and after getting his battery, he'd taken off into the crowd again and disappeared. Blu wouldn't see him again until his next trip the Underworld. It was a nice arrangement for the both of them, but sometimes Blu wished they could be real friends instead of just business partners. Blu felt that way about a lot of people.

With the batteries secure, Blu floated back down to the branching hallways. He only needed a few puffs of air to reach it, and a few more to get down to where Sonya and Mai were floating and staring out at the Underworld. "Morning!!" His good cheer was impossible to resist, and as his glasses lifted off his face and tried to float away, Blu grabbed onto them and stuffed them back onto his face, "Are you ready to explore?!"

[Sonya]

Sonya felt a rush of excitement as Blu re-entered the room. Were they going to go outside now? They were going outside weren’t they? They had to. They couldn’t just come here and not explore! “Good Morning!” She responded, watching Blu’s face expectantly.

Tense as she was, her energy was eager to be released. Consequently she burst out laughing when she saw Blu’s glasses float away. Giggling like a little girl, she watched as he captured the renegade spectacles, put them back on and turned to the mermaids. Then, he said the magic words. “Yes!” Sonya shouted. Her voice rang out loud in the quiet room. Normally, Sonya would have been embarrassed if she’d shouted something out. Normally, she had no energy in the morning. But then, nothing was normal anymore.

[Mai]

"Explore?" Mai wondered, feeling a little wary about the whole thing. The place gave her a weird feeling, like swimming at the entrance of a dark cave, knowing you had to go in to retrieve important plants, but not knowing what creatures you might encounter if you did. Mai wasn't a fan of those moment.

She glanced back down the hallway. She had half a mind to go back to her room, sleep for a few more hours, and then stay there and paint. But Sonya seemed extremely excited about the venture, and Mai felt like doing that would put a damper on the younger girl's spirits. "...is there somewhere to eat down there? I'm starving."

[Blu]

Blu grinned at Sonya's excitement. Mai seemed a bit more cautious about the whole thing. Blu would cure her of that soon enough. That, or she'd get tired of him and jump ship. Wouldn't be the first time. It was okay though. Blu understood he was a bit much sometimes.

"Yeah, there's lots of places to eat!" He assured Mai. Blu's own stomach growled a bit, reminding him that he had gotten up and started working without eating. Food would be really good, and the Underworld was great at making really good food. "There's this great place only a couple of levels down from here, and they've got human food, and they breed their own fish so it's fresh, and it's really nice and mostly quiet and hardly any fights in it!"

Blu tried to stick to the good districts of the Underworld. Not that any of them could really be called 'good' since unlawful people could be found everywhere, but there were still differences. There were seven major trade centres in the Underworld: three for mostly legal items, and four for completely illegal items. Blu stuck to the mostly legal areas, since the only illegal things he tended to buy were hallucinogens, and most of those were only illegal in Terran-controlled space. Plus, the crowd tended to be less rough in these areas. Fewer people carrying pistols out in the open, and more people who stayed sober until after noon.

[Sonya]

Sonya felt a slight twinge of guilt when Mai mentioned food. “Sorry,” she started, “I guess I should have made something but I just-” Then Blu cut her off, but Sonya didn’t mind, because what he said made her apology obsolete anyways. If she felt any sort of apprehension at Blu mentioning a place with few fights as if it were a rarity in the Underworld, she dismissed it instantly. Every particle of her being was buzzing with energy. She had never been this excited, never wanted anything more in her life than to glide down to the ships entrance, open the door, and take her first steps onto non-Corus soil. Well, metal.

Filled with anxious anticipation, Sonya clenched her fists, unintentionally squeezing the handle of the can of compressed air she was still holding. As the nozzle was pointed down, Sonya shot straight up into the air, banged her head on the ceiling, and hissed something in the mer language that she sincerely hoped was incomprehensible out of the water. Rubbing her head, she slowly let out smaller, gentler bursts of air, bringing her self back on level with Mai and Blu.

“Well,” she said, giggling, “at least I know I’ll never forget this moment now.” Not that she would have anyway, bur Sonya was attempting to appear unphased by the impact, despite the fact that it did in fact hurt quite a lot. She couldn’t stand it anymore. “Can we go now? Please?”

[Mai]

They bred their own fish here? Mai found she suddenly approved of the Underworld at least a little now. She was never impressed at those who stole the resources of Corus in huge quantities. These people seemed to make an effort. Though on the other hand...

"I'd rather not have fish," she admitted, glancing back down at the space station. "We're in a new place. Can we try something new?" She paused, realizing Sonya was more well versed in human meals than she was. "I mean... new to me, that is. I assume Sonya could suggest some things..."