Lucky 13 (NaNoWriMo 2017)

Chapter 5: For every action...

Shjorn and Ge'air step out of the landing craft onto a brightly lit Horus afternoon. The light is blinding. Shjorn slams his eyelids shut, but the light streaming through is still too much for his nocturnal nature. He drops to the ground and holds his hands in front of his closed eyes. The pain fades, but the second he lets up the light comes back in, starting the cycle all over again.

Next to him, Ge'air is reacting better. She's still standing, albeit with her eyes closed, but still standing. She has unslung her backpack, her only piece of luggage from Corra, and is shifting blindly though the exterior packets in search of sunglasses.

A dockworker, seeing the commotion, rushes over to them. He pulls a pair of Corrin sunvisors from his pocket and presses them into Ge'air's hand. "Here, he says."

Ge'air slips them on and looks around. The dockworker is knelt beside Shjorn, giving him a pair of glasses. "Thank you," she tell the dockworker. "I don't know what we would have done..."

"This is the fifth time this week," he says. "And it's only tuesday. You Corrins alway forget your glasses."

"I didn't think it would be this bright," she apologizes.

"It's alway this bright, on just about every planet. Do not go outside without proper eye protection." He walks back to the booster he was working on.

"I wonder if all Humans are that nice?" Ge'air asks.

"I hope not," mumbles her brother.

<<>>

Their apartment is a rather small place situated twenty three stories up in one of Horus's famed verticale cities. The first thing Shjorn dose after entering is reconfigure the tint on the window. The windows dark to what for a Human would be considered opaque. Next goes the lights, lowering them down to a shadowy twilight.

When he finishes with that he glances into the living area to find his sister has passed out on the couch. He takes this in, and then goes to one of the bedrooms and does the same.

When night rolls around the two of them are eagerly stroll the streets, taking in all the sight with wonder and awe. Never before had they seen buildings past ten stories, let alone a hundred. The skyscrapers grew like trees around them. Speaking of trees, massive pines grow between the skyscrapers. On Corra each would be the tallest thing for kilometers around, here they're dwarfed by the buildings they live in the shadows of.

The buildings block every angle visible, leaving the only clear view of the sky being up. This is not to say that there are no stars. Each skyscraper glitters with the reflection of hundreds of stars, and as the two of them walk, the scenes change in a never ending kaleidoscope display.

Out on the street, the english of the day gives way to their native tongue of co'a'o'a'e'u. Nocturnal Corrins flood the streets, but not the Corrins of homeworld. These one's have different view on life, no longer bound by tradition they have found themselves free to forge a new culture. Corin harps sing in unison with Terran guitars, Corrin stacked beads mix together with the vibrant color of the Terrans, and the Terran plastic sculptures utilize the hard lines praised by the Corrins.

Having never made it to orbit let alone outside of their star system, the two of them were completely awashed in amazement and utter joy. After a week that feeling had completely worn off.

Now resigned to their apartment, the two of them have begun developing an unhealthy obsession with VR. No longer where their days spent marveling the architecture of the Humans, or visiting the displays of clashing culture that are art. Now days are spent on adventures of daring and danger, all from the comfort of their living room.

The nice thing about a post scarcity civilization, especially one after the advent of AI's and robotics, is there are always enough resources. Not a communist society in which everyone must work to maintain net neutral resource production, no, Horus suffer from what the capitalist would call 'an excess of supply.'

This is wonderful for the dreamers and artists, they are now free from the worries of putting food on the table, but for everyone else this become a slow decline into inactivity. Soon enough Ge'air realizes that a week has gone by in which they have done nothing but eat, sleep, and jack into the web. She takes this as a sign that its time to chang.

She unplugs her brother and drags him with her to the nears shop center. They quickly learn from the instructor the finer point of woodworking. Armed with these new skills, the two of them go about replacing every unit of furniture in their apartment with something built by their own hands. And as their skills improve, they once again replace their furnishing.

This soon grows to bore them as well.

Ge'air quickly sinks back into old habits, sleeping and eating with goggles on, not even takeing them off for her occasional bathroom run. Shjorn does not fall down this same path, he begins delving into the nearby community, fasting the length of Ramadan with his Muslim neighbors, shinging praise with the Christian ones. He goes on hikes with the local Engeas and learns riflery from some Nears a floor down. All this time he reads up on their cultures, traditions, rituals, and most importantly, their languages.

But soon he finds even this to be boring. Present with something new, he devoured it till it was completely gone, and now he hungers for more.

Like a Human with cocaine, he finds himself desperate for a single experience of something new, even if he isn't the one experiencing it anymore. Soon enough he finds himself living vicariously through his sister. Just as she had done for him months earlier, he has unplugged her from the ever present web and is now teaching her everything he has learned.

Much of it is beyond her, the rituals, ceremonies, and languages are a medium she fails to grasp, but the hikes through the wild hills, the practice at the riflery range, the assorted martial arts, to her they were an extension of the game that had become her life and as such she dedicated her every waking hour to developing them.

After just nine short months from when they first left home, they have forgotten ten folds more than what they had learned before. They have just about exhausted their current median and are sinking back towards the realm of VR when Ge'air notices a small article on a news site. 'ITA military academy opens on Horus's moon.'

She shows this to Shjorn and they come to a consensus. They do not return to their apartment that night. By the next day it is on the market and by the end of the week it has been purchased and it is no longer their apartment. They don't care, the had arrived on the planet with two bags amongst them and nothing of importance, they are now leaving the planet with no more bags and much more than they had arrived with.