[h3][colour=#40826D]Nguyễn Nở Vĩnh[/colour][/h3][hr][sup][h3][b][i][/i][/b][/h3][/sup][color=Gainsboro][indent][indent][indent][indent][justify]For the first few days, she’d managed to fill the time well enough. Even beyond the systematic neglect the Dullahan had endured prior to Everest, none of the cleanings since had caught little details. With a quiet first voyage, she’d had nothing to do but go above and beyond. But in space, there’s no new trash to bring in, no mud to track, and only so many spills to clean up after. Space is sterile. Space has no outside trying to wriggle its way in. Away from port, the entire world is within such finite bounds. When routine cleaning is handled, there is only so much to do. There are only so many details. There’s only so much to be done.

Besides, there was no overtime aboard the Dullahan. Pay was a daily rate, provided as long as she was there. She could have done the bare minimum. She could have just tidied and kept things presentable. Really, that was the option that made the most sense. It had occurred to her on the fifth day of their voyage, to just do what was necessary and chip away at the extra work. What urgency was there to make spotless places nobody could see, smell, or touch? 

She told herself she’d sleep in. It was good for her to get more sleep. She was tired. She needed more sleep. There was no need to pull long nights or early mornings. Yet she found herself awake long after she’d intended to sleep, woke with a start early the next morning, and found herself unable to return to sleep. Her stomach twisted into knots. It wasn’t energy making her so restless, not quite. She just couldn’t justify hanging around idly. It wasn’t deserved, wasn’t earned, and wasn’t necessary either. She tried reading, watching, and playing. All were haunted by this same restlessness. She couldn’t wrestle herself back into the bed.

So Vĩnh came crawling back to superfluous effort. Satisfaction was not to be found by entertainment or self-care. It was lodged somewhere and needed a good vacuuming, scrubbing, and wiping-down. The restroom was sterilized. That had been her primary focus for the first few days. By the time she was considering the futility of her devotion, she’d gotten deep into scrubbing the galley. Was it noticed? Did anyone care? Did it matter? She had seen the undersides of the tables, the little details of the floor, the young grime fused with ancient debris—it all begged for attention. Good enough? How could anyone tolerate good enough once they’d taken a good look at anything! And whether it went acknowledged or not, she could see the difference, however small, after she’d badgered each spot with the effort it demanded. Focus was a beautiful drug. Focus smothered consciousness itself, replacing it with the tranquil bliss of action. 

Were it that she could become the automaton she pretended to be as she worked, Vĩnh would have been serene from the moment she became so. But humanity breaches the thoughtless fantasy. As the customer and client always demands more, so too does the crew create new messes to return to. Did Jax cake grime onto the tables? Of course not; his grime could be quickly removed. But even if the entire crew were composed of chaotic litterers, they could not recreate the ancient sediments she’d already removed. So all they offered was interruptions—brief, mandatory distractions to more cathartic tasks. It wasn’t their fault. Being a person is messy. Life is messy. It couldn’t be helped, really. It just constituted something unresolvable—something routinely easy yet enduringly insurmountable. Those little nooks and crannies could be lastingly transformed with effort. But the tables? They were easily cleaned, but never stayed as they were meant to be. 

When she had taken the job, her work sounded manageable enough. She had even found a way to find some measure of purpose in it in less than a week. The reality was that the cathartic cleanings were finite, and the simple mundanities would be all that was left. In moments of downtime, even when guilt and disgust were pushed aside, this haunting future prodded at her. If lasting satisfaction was not to be found in labor, where could it be found? Is life just a series of obsessions interrupted routinely by repetitive tasks? Maybe it is, and purpose lies within labor and labor alone. Perhaps the Centauri are correct in their strategy of stripping humanity down into singular purposes preordained at the moment of conception. 

In the moments between her music and podcasts, these rambling musings occupied Vĩnh’s mind. A part of her wanted to quiet it all, to turn up the volume and drown it all out with knowledge of things she’d never see. But to what end? At old jobs, there was always real noise to fill the void. There were bills to juggle, numbers to crunch, dates to shuffle, and deadlines to navigate. There was a future, uncertain as it was, that shone in the distance. A guiding light to give direction—a goal to chase and a pride to cherish. She’d come so far. And now she was here. Trapped in a metal box hurdling through the cosmos, surrounded by people of walks she’d long had the good sense to avoid—people with misfortunes different to hers that she’d rather not pile onto her own. The ship had direction. But hers? That of most of her crewmates? What direction was mere survival? What joy could be found in this case, knowing one had worked so hard to climb only to falter at the summit? Had her crewmates followed the same trajectory? What of their efforts, if any? When had history transformed the stars from specks of wonder to beacons of dread?

How does one survive when striving for more is no longer an option? 

A part of Vĩnh wanted to take her time on the self-assigned task of refurbishing the interior of the Dullahan. The little tastes of real progress that came from scrubbing the floor panels back into their youth were so precious, she wanted to savour them. But maybe she was greedy in this way. Maybe she had the disease of insatiability. She couldn’t help herself. Every little achievement illuminated the next task. She needed to chase the next completion. Planning her next steps in the ship’s rejuvenation felt familiar. A little future wriggled along, with plans to be made and problems to be overcome. If only she had the good sense not to look further. Optimistic projections, pessimistic projections—they all bore the same harrowing truth. The future of deep-cleaning was finite. Only the little recurrent messes of life were permanent. And with no apparent future beyond the ship, the claustrophobic anxiety of a constrained future got to her every time she went far enough into any forecast.

Every time she approached the problem, she found herself spiralling instead of thinking. By the time they’d docked on Adrastea-1, all she could offer to herself was the proposition of buying time. She could, at least, pile more onto her plate to forestall the inevitable. She could do more than scrub away grime. She could do more than sterilize. She could rejuvenate. Rust was a disease of the metal, after all. Not really, but it was often treated as such. Like a rot in wood, it ate away at good structure and left dirt in its wake. It would only continue until it was handled. The ship’s panels creaked and groaned. Metal was exposed all over the place—weeping after ages endured without protective paint or coating! The crew of the Dullahan had been given a ship already decrepit. As she read and listened for problems and solutions, they revealed themselves in turn. The Dullahan was a great machine drifting in the harshness of space. Nothing was idiopathic. It all could be solved, fixed, rectified. Even if some parts had to be changed. Even if she didn’t know even a modicum of what the engineers and the experienced crew could already feel in their bones, she could learn. The Dullahan was a project. A finite project, but a project all the same. This—this was the future. She didn’t quite know how, but when the cleaning was done, she could chicane these new things to do from under fate’s ruling. 

It was just a matter of resources and knowledge. The latter was no problem; there was no shortage of time to research, learn, and ask questions of those more knowledgeable. But the former? The Dullahan was doing better than breaking even, but not well enough that it would be wise to propose such a thing to the Captain just yet. The post-mission reports did not suggest room for even minor new expenses. It wasn’t urgent, not by any meaningful sense of the word. But it [i]felt[/i] urgent. And they’d need to have the money at some point, or the rust would become a problem in the long-run. Hopefully there were others thinking of the long-run too. It would be nice, for once, to head off problems before they arose. After a lifetime playing catch-up, it would be the greatest win of them all.

Vĩnh couldn’t help but chuckle to herself. Solving something in advance as a reward—what a funny thought. 

But hey, while they were in port, it wouldn’t hurt to waste time window-shopping to gauge actual local costs for the myriad rust-removal solutions. They couldn’t buy them now, but she could use it as a tool to forestall the inevitable wall. The world is such a strange place. Might as well smile as long as there’s still a ride to take.[/justify][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/color]