shatterverse | (no subject)

"What's his name? For that matter, what's yours? I'm Neil."

Her age is so very much not his business.

"Miki," she answers. "And I'm Ai-Ling, Hi."

"If I see him, I'll tell him you're looking."

"Thanks," she says. "And give him a smack around the head for not finding me yet."

This is all his fault.

Snort.

"I might leave that part out."

Ai-Ling grins with her own cheekiness, because she's the funniest thing in the world.

"Where are you headed?"

"Nowhere in particular, other than that way." He nods forward, in the direction he'd been travelling.

"Just travelling."

She nods, understanding. It's what she's been doing after all.

Even if he offered, she wouldn't take a lift, but she does jerk her head towards the nearby field.

"I was about to stop to eat. Would you like to join me?"

She has this deer needs eating.

"Sure. Just a minute."

He starts the car up again and turns it away from her, onto a likely-looking bit of dirt by the side of the road. Well, somebody might conceivably want to get past.

When he gets out, he grabs his bag out of the backseat on his way.

Turning the sled-on-wheels into the field isn't easy, but she manages it skillfully, pulling it towards the centre.

"I even have some firewood, is you want it cooked," she says. Which is helpful as there aren't that many trees around here.

"That would be a bonus, yeah. I've got..."

He looks in the bag.

"...apples. A lot of apples. Thought I had some dates, too, but I can't find them at the moment."

Anybody who resupplies at the Cooper farm is guaranteed to come away with fruit.

"Fresh fruit?"

Ai-Ling looks up from setting the fire, like she might hug him.

"You've been at the farm, haven't you?"

"Yeah. I have no idea where they're getting their supply, but here."

Since she's occupied, he sits down and then holds out an apple instead of obeying his natural instinct to toss it to her.

"Plenty more where that came from."

Ai Ling holds out a hand fingers up, palm forward, as if expecting it tossed. When it doesn't come, she looks up, leans across and takes it.

"Thanks," she says, takes a bite, then gets on with lighting the fire. It doesn't take very long, but she does have to do it the long way round.

"So where're you from?"

"Not here. I'm a, what's the word, bring-in."

He fishes out an apple of his own and holds it without taking a bite.

"A week ago it was 2307 - the year, I mean. Now, apparently, 2009. Still adjusting."

She glances at him sideways, with a smirk.

"At least you're from Earth. We don't even count the years where I'm from."

"Yeah?"

Slight grin.

"All right, you're one up on me there."

He finally starts eating his apple.

There are definitely some aspects of Ai-Ling's homeworld that prepared her for this life. She eats her apple approvingly while bustling around, leaving the campfire in order to carev up a decent hunk of meat for both of them.

"What's 2307 like, then?"

"Orbital elevators," he says immediately. "I'm still getting used to not seeing them off in the distance. Everything else is pretty much like it is here. But the orbital elevators... yeah, those are a big difference."

She gives him a blank look. One might think it was a polite blank look, except for the dimpling at the corners of her mouth. It's a feigned-polite blank look that's really finding mockery in the fact he didn't think she'd need that explained.

Wry smile.

"I wouldn't know where to start explaining."

He takes a look around, and then points south.

"The tower for this section would be that way. Just a thin black line, at this distance, going straight up and down. Like somebody hung a string from the sky."

She follows his point to nothing much.

"Why?"

"...Uh. Okay, this might be a long story."

Neil takes a bite of his apple, thinks for a minute, then glances back at the place the orbital elevator isn't.

"The elevators transmit electricity down to ground level from an orbital ring of solar power cells above the atmosphere. Now tell me which parts of that I have to explain."

"Electricity's the power that makes all the Earth gadgets go?"

See, Ai-Ling knows stuff! "And you get it from the sun? I thought you got it from hot rocks."

"Yeah, exactly. The sun's another way to get it. There are a lot of ways, but the sun is one of the easiest. The problem is, a solar power cell just lying on the ground can't get as much sunlight because of all the air in the way. So somebody built a ring of them around the Earth up above the atmosphere, where there's no air between them and the sun, and the orbital elevators go from that to the ground. They keep it in place and make it easier to send things up and down-- people, power, machines, whatever."