[center][img]https://c.tenor.com/ZW338ugj5agAAAAd/tenor.gif[/img][/center] [i]" Hello, this is Rol Emsberg speaking. Signal's a little cracked. Belters out here don't have that great of a reception. Anyway, I was wondering if that position for...'Nutrition Officer' was still open? I'm kind of in between jobs at the moment so I'm ready to work whenever you are. I'd be willing to give a proper resume, identification....give me a job and I'll do it. I've got nothing else to do anyway. "[/i] [hr] [h2]APPROXIMATELY SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO ON GANYMEDE[/h2] [hr] The first mistake after entering the substation's bathroom was checking whether it had a mirror.The substation's bathroom was beyond repair, Rol could knew that much already. Even in the dim shadows, he could see the black cracks had rooted their way into the white ceram-composite and the smell of mold, an hab tech's nightmare. By the time he flicked on the switch and the white glow of the fluoros flooded the room, his cracked reflection stared at him from under the mirror's surface. Rol was startled, almost jumping on his feet. How long had it been since he last saw a mirror? One, two months? There wasn't much time for hygiene at the cube dorms and their rooms weren't equipped with mirrors, much less functioning ones. He knows he's a mess, even by colonist standards. His beard is a unshaven, matted knot of sweat and blood red hair. His eyes are shadowed with insomnia and he can smell the syn-caffe on his breath that keeps every molecule in his body from collasping. It's not as bad as the eye though. His fingers dance, skirting the edge of the red puckered scar but never touching it. He can't blame the EVA first aider. He was lucky to survive the meteor shower that happened today with only a four foot chunk of metal stuck in his head without missing his head. He knows that Klooseward will force him to aug up. Can't have someone with a physical disability lest they get shredded apart in the Jovian labour courts. Rol remembers the few fearmongering articles he read on SOLCOM about cybernetic enhancement as he splashes bracken tap water on his face. The buzzwords enter his mind like errant as he splashed tap water into his face. Prolonged mental instability. Possible psychosis. Broken. A missing eye somehow seems more disfiguring than a missing arm or leg. Cybereyes are less expensive but a coltan alloy limb with synth-myomers earns more bragging rights rewards in dorm gossip than a dinky little eye. He drags his fingers through his hair, cleaning out three EVA's worth of dandruff and shuts off the taps. He breathes in the filtered air, letting the water drip down his face, before a snore punctures the silence. The source doesn't take that time much to spot. He pulls back the shower curtains in the sole cleanse cube and the bedraggled hijab on the woman's head immediately gives it away. She's wearing the bulky EVA suit, the front plastic zipper pulled down revealing a dirty tanktop damp with sweat. Her eyes are closed and her mouth is parted halfway open, in the throes of sleep. He coughs and the woman's eyes flutter open, first in a daze, and then, wide in shock. " Yo." The woman's cheeks grow red, adjusting her hijab and sputtering as she pulls herself up to her knees, hastily zipping up her EVA. "Shit, Chief. So sorry. I thought I would get some rest in here for a second. Condenser's broken and..." " Relax, Manya. I'm not here to ream you out." He motions to the toliet seat next to the shower cubicle. "Mind if I...?" She nods hurriedly. The toliet seat squeaked under his weight, his hand ruffling through the front pocket of his EVA for his psilo pen. It clicked open with a pnuematic hiss. He takes a drag off the rebreather and puffs out the smoke slowly, letting it trail out from his nose and mouth. It's not the true stuff, the teeth-rotting crap that makes you go on day long benders. The watered down corp version is scoffed at by the old colony hand veterans but it doesn't burn a hole in his wallet and is mild enough to take the edge off work. Not addicting enough to be a medical insurance black hole but not " So, everything alright?," Rol immediately regrets his choice of words as Manya shrivels up into a ball. " I know " " Heh, that's funny. I fucked up." Manya whispered. Rol not offering any response as a signal for her to continue on." I forgot to download the meteor shower report from the SOLCOM servers. My radio frequencies were fucked up because I put off repairing it for the third time in a row. You...your eye..." Rol stayed silent, letting the strained rant peter off into ragged breathing and sobs. He took another drag off his psilo before stuffing it back into his pocket. " This is a shit job. Some days are boring and some days are...like what happened today." He coughed, staring off into the wall in recollection, before continuing on. " But, you just gotta ignore all that and focus. Otherwise, you can't do your job. If you can't do your job-" " I promise I won't make a mistake again.," Manya blurted out. Rol suppressed a laugh, turning it into a cough. Manya raised an eyebrow in confusion as Rol fought his amusement and replied back. " No, you will. You're gonna make a mistake, maybe the same, maybe different, but it's not because of you or anything related to productivity or some bullshit metric that HR likes to spout out. It's just because shit like this happens, whether we want it to or not." Rol took another drag in the bathroom. He stares at Manya for a moment. He hasn't pried too much on her past. There were few practicing muslims in Jovspace already. Most of them were in Sol territory due to the pilgrimages they still had to do to Earth. She was young. Orphaned or a single parent. Probably struggling for money. No one came into a colony job. They were either born into it or forced into doing it. Her hands were not calloused yet, her palms sowed full of blisters. "You know, I once ran out of oxygen on a EVA.," Rol said, breathing it out casually. Manya's eyes stared at him with a wonderment that made him shrink. He wasn't used to that type of admiration. It was unnatural to him, repulsive even. " Really?," She questioned. " Yeah, really. Lot of things happened that day.," His head leaned back in recollection. " Mom had the bird flu that day and was on life support. Supervisor reamed me out for wasting our procurement budget. I only had four hours of sleep the night before. I was out eight klicks from the nearest sub station. I was in the old EVAs before our requisition team spotted that tank bug that fried a dozen on the south station, 'member that?" Manya nodded as he continued speaking. " So, yeah. Happened to me while I was taking a soil sample on a scout assignment. I had this weird moment where it was maybe the most peaceful moment of my life. I could just sit out on that plain and choose to...not exist anymore." " And then, I just walked back to base and went on with my life." Rol shrugged. " But what I was going to say is that the job isn't everything but this moment, this thing isn't everything. You're gonna lie awake at night, thinking about what should have been. Then, you'll wake up the next morning, take a shit and then, go back to your next shift. This job sucks but don't let it pull you down. You're better than that. I know that. " " So, there's no punishment?," She questioned. "Well, kind of hard to think of one." Rol scratched the back of his head, scrunching his face in thought. " There's more important things at the moment. In the meantime, you can help me sort out all the paperwork we'll have to file for the incident report." The look of absolute horror that passed over her face was enough to make Rol feel an itch of pity. Phantom pains and aches already began to creep in his hands, memories of metronomically typing away at a keyboard into a dinky little CRT monitor for ten hours straight. The beancounters at Klooseward always tried to cheap out on everything. "Fuck.," Manya said, resigned. "Eyup." [hr] [h2]THE PRESENT [/h2] [hr] Add substrate feed to incubator dishes. Dice radishes into four inch cubes. Gel the duckweed. Coagulate soy. Keep stock from overboiling. Sharpen knife. Clean out carbon trap. Rebrine lacto-fermented pickles. Fertigate herb farm. Check mealworm population for genetic instability. Dry -smoke coriander. Add the substrate feed. Sharpen knife. Beads of sweat ran down Rol's face as he dipped a ladle into a cylindrical stockpot. Chunky clumps of rice and millet danced in the thick, cloudy liquid like a snowstorm. He stirred, making sure to keep the congee from separating apart like oil and water. An evening soaking shortened what normally would have been five hours of cooking if he had started from raw grains but the process still took ages. A short cook meant that the crew would have dental appointments from the amount of uncooked grains they would be eating and a long cook would scorch the bottom of the only stock pan onboard the ship into a foul black mess. He took a sip of it and pursed his lips, letting the starchy liquid scald his tongue. Walking over to the counter behind him, he grabs a bowl full of glistening stock and pours half of it into the pot. He stirs it again and takes another sip, letting out a satisfied hum. Nearly ready. Congee was not Rol's first choice. He'd initially planned to go with grits but the recent blockades had cut off all supplies of dehydrated maize across the wider solar system. Corn and its genetically modified varietals was the most cost effective meal of choice. The lack of vendors meant that he had to source other options for cheap carbs. Rice had gone the way of beef and other water heavy crops. Last time he saw a rice field was in SOLCOM photos of heavily guarded picturesque ponic fields on Mars. Supplementing the rice with expired Jovian barley and millet was a last minute decision but not uncommon. He'd seen street vendors do it before with grated soy beans. Serenity in chaos. That was what his Mom told him how a cook operated in the hab. Objectively, it sounded simple to any layman. Keeping people from starving.The most dififcult part was keeping them happy while they were being fed and in an economical way. A spaceship was akin to a colony hab in some respects. Rol watched the thin wisps of boiled water pour out of the stock pot like a chimney as the congee continued to bubble away. The color reminded him of Ganymede, the bleak cloudless skies that seemed to permeate the landscape. It had been over a year since he’d last saw the colony but a part of him ached to be back there, even though he was a wanted man if he ever registered himself at the orbital borders. Most colony workers didn’t have the same kinship towards their work sites, merely viewing it as a stop on the road, like a spaceship docking at a port. He knew Ganymede though. Knew the nights where the hab thermostat broke and he had to huddle in his blanket for comfort. Knew the myriad of Martians, exsols, feds and people that he sweated and bled with. It was hell but it was home for nearly a good thirty years of life. Now, the Dullahan was now his home or rather the galley. The tight constraints of the cruiser and its metal corridors were oddly comforting. If he was a colonist on one of those wide-open greenfields on a agriworld, perhaps, he would have found it oppressing. Rol never grew accustomed to becoming excited like most colonists were when going on EVAs. Most of them said it was a welcome relaxation after spending all their time cooped up in a hab. Wandering an endless barren desert of ice wasn’t exactly of great comfort to him. Recently, he had spent most of his time in the galley. He had a bunk bed but it had become so inconvenient to move in between the two rooms that he felt most comfortable just sleeping on the countertops when it called for it. His mind wandered to a cork board near the entrance of the galley, numerous tack notes covering the surface like overgrown mold. [X] – Reseed substrate for fungal germination – need to check shitake and oysters [?] – Meal prep for next week – need to supplement protein – check wholesale suppliers [ ] – Debt payment - URGENT The last unchecked item made him gulp. He couldn’t think about that now. He neede something to distract him. His finger itched.Pulling some chives from the edge of the kitchen's window, he let the metronomic rhythm of cutting and dicing lull his mind into peace once more.