Karen wasn't enjoying her day. For starters, she realized halfway to her room that nobody else was heading in. Evidently, people were [i]not[/i] required to be in their quarters for launch. It struck her as stupid, in terms of safety. Her thoughts were verified, after a fashion, as she saw a pair of security personnel rush away on some sudden emergency. Not the safety issues she imagined, sure, but safety issues nonetheless. 

Speaking of which, post-launch Eden was a bit of a mess. The trees had lost a few branches as she feared, but less than she was truly afraid of. Whatever technical things were going on with the launch, Karen provisionally approved. It did, however, mean that Eden would have to be down for an hour or so while cleanup happened, and she didn't want any injuries on her watch since launch was still ensuing, so it would be even longer besides. She pulled out her PDA and spent a minute filing a maintenance request, listing it medium priority and potentially dangerous - clarifications in the "Any other comments" section.

With essentially nothing to do until in or after warp, and Karen didn't know enough to be sure which, she meandered through the hub, trusting her PDA to bring her back home later via its map. Despite having visited many times before, Karen had never needed to go much of anywhere except Eden, which was the biggest, most difficult to miss location in the Hub. 

So for now, Karen contented herself with walking the streets... No, wait, it's a roof. And a street. But now she was on a bridge of sorts? What is this, an elevator that never goes down? Ohh, the down one is across the road. Maybe she could hop off the bridge to the floor below? There was no reason to, of course, but curiosity doesn't always listen to common sense. Regardless, there was a ladder, that someone was using. She supposed it was faster than going the fifty feet over to the elevators, but you couldn't really hold anything...

After a solid half hour of this stream of consciousness, Karen was starting to tire. She wasn't unhealthy, but she knew fully well that her weight was above the supposed ideal, and a bit above one standard deviation from the median as well. She tucked her brown hair back behind her ears and walked into a nearby tea shop, wondering if her orange frock was insensitive, since almost the entire ship had dressed in very dark colors, as if in mourning. Actually, she thought, while ordering an iced tea dubbed "Devil's Kiss", mourning made quite a bit of sense. Thus, orange was kind of insensitive to many billions of people. "Well shit." She thought, but very little could be done now. 

When the tea arrived, Karen swiped her card and mused over how likely she was to overspend. She had never been great with a credit card, and thus always preferred cash. She hadn't payed attention to the ingredients of her tea while ordering, but took a decided interest now. The first sip was interesting, since it tasted both significantly sweetened, and noticeably bitter. She still had almost no idea what was in it, but it seemed a bit similar to black tea. By the halfway mark, she had noticed that the sweetness tended to disappear shortly after each swallow, but the bitterness lingered. Metaphors raced through Karen's head. It was like reckless love, it was like dealing with the devil, it was like that time in college she started frequently drinking coffee to keep herself working. That had ended very poorly, with caffeine addiction being a somewhat minor edition to the troubles of her past. The one thing she hoped the tea couldn't work as a metaphor for, was this journey. If leaving Earth behind was sweet, she did not dare to think of what may lie ahead.