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rainbowfic2023-09-25 07:03 pm
azzandra) wrote in rainbowfic2023-09-25 07:03 pm
Newsprint 21, Blue Heeler 15
Name: Azzandra
Story: Transit
Colors: Newsprint (21. Some days you wake up and immediately start to worry. Nothing in particular is wrong, it's just the suspicion that forces are aligning quietly and there will be trouble.), Blue Heeler (15. Remember I am always here for you, even if you can't see me, because I love you.)
Supplies and Styles: Diptych, life drawing
Word Count: 1444
In the Nocturne's office, occupying the top floor of Transit's third-highest spire, Xophon was waiting anxiously as the city was driven through the Endless Night. The ghost drive which ate up the vast distances between various points in the void of space was thrumming at highest intensity just before the Nocturne pulled back the lever to ease it to a stop.
Xophon watched the screens arrayed before the Nocturne's chair with some curiosity, but not as much understanding as he would have liked. Some of the screens had obvious functions: several showed the accounting sheets for the city's supplies, or open reports with paragraphs highlighted, or checklists. One smaller screen just to the side of the Nocturne's arm rest was merely open to a news page on Transit's public directory. The biggest, central screen, however, showed the coordinates of the city in space, framed on either side with scrolling notifications and values that meant... something. Xophon wasn't familiar with all the acronyms.
When the city finally reached its destination, and the Nocturne turned off the ghost drive, there was something like a shuddering clang in the deep machine. It wasn't physically felt, but Xophon was a high priest of Alexyz, and as she inhabited the deep machines under the city, he could somewhat sense what she did.
The experience was likely more intense for Zynthia, and Xophon could not help the smallest twinge of resentment as he had that thought. He would not describe himself as a jealous man, but on some level, he would always think it unfair that Zynthia's powers and authority should be so much greater only because she'd been at this job longer, and only because Atoz had been god of Transit long before Alexyz was born. Xophon had long been convinced that he would be Chief Engineer if such things were decided by merit: was Alexyz not much more efficient than Atoz? Swifter, less prone to glitches? Offering a wider variety of tools and abilities?
Xophon did not voice these thoughts out loud, because he sensed the Nocturne would not have the patience for hearing all this again at the moment, but he also abandoned his initial reason for dropping into the Nocturne's office in favor of curiosity.
"Are we meeting up with another city?" he asked.
The Nocturne made a vague gesture towards her indecipherable spreadsheets.
"Next week," she said. "I've bumped up our travel to the location to save on power. We're supposed to bridge Hex and Gardens."
"Ah," was Xophon's stiff response.
Transit, by its nature, often offered such a service. Not all cities had compatible architectures with each other, and so could not dock with one another. Idyll, for example, had a highly proprietary docking port that served it well when it was just a royal resort, but less well now, when it hindered it from docking with half the cities in the Dispersion.
For a small fee, however, Transit was only too happy to help bridge Idyll or any other city with whatever other city they wanted. It was, in fact, how they managed to obtain most of their supplies. Transit could grow some amount of food, and even had whole levels of its spires dedicated to greenhouses, but feeding the whole population was trickier. Not to mention all the other materials that they could not fabricate in quantity: medicine, textiles, parts.
In the case of Hex and Gardens, however, it was not even that these two cities were incompatible. They were perfectly able, from a technological standpoint, to dock and trade with one another. The problem was, they didn't like to. If asked, Gardens would say there was no way they'd allow those Hex hooligans in their nice clean city, and Hex would say there was no way they could tolerate the prisses from Gardens walking around and sneering at them all the time.
If they never crossed each other's paths, they would be happy. Unfortunately, they were somewhat stuck: Gardens provided the food Hex needed, and Hex provided vast quantities of exotic materials that Gardens used as fertilizer.
It was a win for everyone, therefore, if Transit acted as a buffer. It was especially a win for Transit, who got both food and raw matter for industrial fabrication out of the deal.
It was less of a win for Xophon, whose family still lived in Gardens, because he couldn't see any way he could weasel out of meeting with them.
"Shall I have a news alert sent out to the populace?" Xophon asked rather stiffly.
"Through both the Atoz and Alexyz network, please," the Nocturne replied airily.
"I will have the scribe draw it up," Xophon promised, before leaving the office. In his distraught state, he nearly ran into the doorframe.
Once he was out in the hallway, he pressed a hand to the bridge of his nose, as if rubbing it vigorously enough would allay his migraine. He was going to have to go through his wardrobe, prepare his quarters, scour any nasty talk of him off the city's public discussion forums... His second mother would still find fault in him somehow, but he'd mitigate it however he could.
His 'running off to Transit' had always been taken as a kind of childish rebellion, unfortunately, and whatever he accomplished here, no matter how important, would never be able to overtake that impression. The mature thing, in his mothers' opinion, would always be to return to Gardens and break his back working in the hanging greenhouses, because no other form of work was quite real to his family.
He had no plans of doing such a thing. If his family could not respect him, then certainly there were other places he could find respectability.
Ah, but first he needed to tell the scribe to write up the announcements.
Dangerfield was in the middle of idly filling out their food card for the month when they got the ping. It came on their Alexyz tablet, which was how they knew exactly who was bothering them. Nobody else contacted them directly on Alexyz.
They continued with filling out the food card on their Atoz tablet. The deadline was coming up, anyway, for their home neighborhood to place the bulk order, and if they didn't finish, they'd be at the expensive mercy of individual purchase. They tapped the checkmarks for a few staples they remembered running low on--salt, rice, pickled vegetables--and sent the card off just under the deadline.
Unhurried, they packed away the Atoz tablet in their tablet bag and pulled up the Alexyz one from the same tablet bag's other slot.
Sure enough, when they lit up the screen, it was Xophon's blaring bright red notification taking up the screen. Zynthia could be pretty persistent with her messages too, but when she made her messages take up most of the screen, at least she was kind of classy about it. And Zynthia, Dangerfield thought with grim resignation, was at least a much rarer sight in any of their notifications than Xophon, who took it upon himself to relay any request for system-wide announcements.
Dangerfield had no real avenue for complaint, however. When they took this job as scribe for the Temple of Atoz, it had seemed an easy gig. After all, Zynthia didn't really care as much for announcing things, so most of the requests came from the Nocturne's office.
Ever since Alexyz was forked off from Atoz, however, her high priest had grown into a self-important menace, badgering Dangerfield at any hour of the day to write up this or that message. Transit had never been so well-informed, and Dangerfield had never been so annoyed. They wouldn't have taken this job if they knew it involved this much work.
And now what did Xophon want? Dangerfield skimmed the instructions twice, regretting that they had already sent out the food card, because docking with Gardens means an influx of fresh food, but then they read closer and--
Oh no.
They let the Atoz tablet clatter to the table and leaned their head in their hands.
Gardens, they could tolerate. They made themselves eminently tolerable by bringing food anywhere they went.
But if they were meeting up with Hex, that meant...
Auntie Claybake and cousin Peril would be dropping in on them. Dangerfield had not changed residences since the last time Hex had docked, so they'd find them easily, but perhaps Dangerfield could go live with a friend and pretend they'd moved.
Yes, good. Satisfied with this solution, Dangerfield nodded to themselves and started drafting the announcement. After they were done, they would fill a bug-out bag and find some place to hunker down.
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Transit had never been so well-informed, and Dangerfield had never been so annoyed.
lol
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