Sorry this is slightly behind schedule, I have been extremely busy irl this month (and will continue to be... until mid-October... aieeee) and life's been getting away from me.
Transcript
gigi-the-bear asked: Gillie, what was it like visiting earth for college? I'm sure that amount of nature everywhere was strange for someone who grew up in space.
Gillie: You Terrans think we live in 6 foot grey tubes... Nexus Jovia has, like, parks. There's way more nature on Earth, obviously, but that wasn't the most jarring thing about it... For me it was the sky! Not being able to see the rest of the city above me felt so unsettling? Like we were all going to be swept out into space at any moment!
Spekke asked: Idrisah, did you know Talita at university?
Idrisah: Oh, no! Her alma mater is the University of Jovia. They're mostly a tech college, their liberal arts programs are... rather anemic. I was in the linguistics program at Martlet College of the Arts. The UoJ's a much older college, it's in one of the fourth expansion cylinders. Martlet's in the last expansion, the seventh. It's probably a good thing Talita didn't go to Martlet, haha! The xenosociology department would have never stopped hounding her with research requests!
Talita: Is that what those emails are...
25 thoughts on “RttS Reader Questions 4”
JoB
Now imagine Gillie standing under the night sky and there suddenly is a gust of strong wind (because weather is a *thing* planet(withatmosphere)side) …
“HULL BREACH!!!” =8-O
Amargarrex
She better be careful
Tentament
I would be more worried about the requests from the xenobiologists…
Gar G
Can only imagine how unsettling that could feel
Talita’s reaction tho
evileeyore
Yeah Talita… “research requests”, let’s just pretend that’s what those emails were…
😛
Gar G
Oh yeah, there definitely could’ve been worse ones
(I mean modern humans are bad enough, imagine how they’d be in this sort of setting!)
Sen
Of course a lot of researchers would be interested in a human raised alien. The orphanage where she grew up in, must have gotten tons of inquiries as well. Glad she dodged a bullet.
Arcstone
I actually have at times while looking up at the clear night sky felt weirdly like I was staring into a big yawning abyss that I felt like I was gonna fall into somehow. Like as though I should be holding onto something.
Thats actually weirdly relatable right there.
LowKeyMoth
My partner has a similar thing about looking up to the sky because they largely grew up in places with a lot of light pollution. For me, I’m used to it since I grew up way out in the north woods, but they get really anxious vertigo about falling into space if they stare up at the stars too long.
Meanwhile, I start to get weird if there aren’t enough trees around or if there aren’t nearby bodies of water. It’s wild what we get accustomed to and what then feels strange when we travel.
40
Nexus Jovia is beautiful we need to see more 🙏🙏🙏
gigi-the-bear
yayyyy my question got answered!! and yeah i hadn’t thought about that! having everything be so OPEN when you grew up in a confined space would feel kinda weird i bet.
the Inmara
It feels SO in character that Talita gets the requests anyway but can’t bring herself to open them, and has been kind of worrying about it this whole time. Just, like, that’s her lot in life.
boxesofboxes
Ha, feel you Gillie. I’m from a hilly area and plains freak me out. Too flat!
Aurie
Ha! I’m born & raised in an area that is entirely flat… and I’m just the opposite. Land having elevation feels kinda whack.
Talkinghornetsnest
SAME! I live in a fairly flat area with the tallest buildings being 3 stories max and the idea of seeing more buildings/land when I look UP is crazy to me.
feesh
same here! in plains i feel like im about to be snatched up by a bird of prey. need those mountains to cradle me like a baby
Rob
One time I caught the Indian Pacific – the transcontinental train here in Australia. One place it stops is a near deserted townsite called Cook. It is in the Nullarbor Plain, and the place is dead flat and almost empty.
You could tell the people from heavily urbanised areas, because they got of the train to look around, and after about 10 minutes would start to cluster closer and closer to the train doors, as the empty silence got to them.
thehappysmiler
People’s reactions to different environments based on where they grew up are so interesting to me! Like I was raised on an island and sometimes when I visit the mainland I get wigged out by the idea that the land around me just…. hugely extends outwards continuously in all directions for thousands of miles. That’s so much?? Wdym I could get in the car and drive for days?? It’s TOO BIG
Raccoonmeister
I’m from an area full of fjells (Lapland), but my dad comes from the Dutch countryside (meaning EXTREMELY flat). This one time that we were visiting his side of the family, we had to take two of our younger cousins a bit more south for I don’t remember why, but then the fields started to be a slight bit elevated from the road and there was a ditch in the middle. My cousins turned to tye windows and started shouting about the ground not being flat and they were really worried (the older one of them was 8 at the time I think), and to me and my brother that was extremely absurd, like huh? We barely even noticed it, it was still extremely flat for us.
Amanda/OwlBear
oh oh all the paired cylinders in Nexus Jovia, all the funky ways they must spin to balance the rotational inertia, brrr so cool
SIGSTKFLT
The central cylinder marked “1” is unpaired! Heresy!
Maybe there’s two conta-rotating cylinders stacked.
Tyrone the Miner
Its where they have the Helium storage so its very light
=)
JoB
Hrm. One could probably save a lot of material (atmosphere, massive outer hull, propulsion for the rotation, …) by placing the second counter-rotating cylinder *into* the first (concentric) … ?
Amanda/OwlBear
eh it’s tiny, hardly matters
Jay Eaton
The paired sphere is underneath. It’s a top-down view of a 3d structure :^)