Rainy Days

Zeela went into the sim-chamber and slammed the door behind her. Then she turned on a rain simulation. Virtual drops of water fell from the ceiling. The wall panels disguised themselves as a vast landscape veiled in darkness by the thick clouds overhead. The occasional lightning strike lit up the fields and surrounding trees. Zeela turned down her suit's temperature to realistic levels. She did not like that the preset kept the feeling of room temperature consistent. Being in the rain should feel cold. At least that's what she thought. She lay down in the mud and stared at the clouds.

"She'll cool off soon enough," said Lani and started collecting the tools from the floor that Zeela had thrown about, "Let's just take out the squart ourselves. You still support me in that decision, right?" He didn't wait for Chip's response and started loosening the bolts that held the squart in place.

After a while Chip calmed down a bit and tried to say something in between sniffles. "What's that Chip? You got to speak up," yelled Lani who by now had climbed up on the big pipe to reach the bolts on top of the squart.

"I said," repeated Chip a bit louder now, "that maybe we shouldn't sell the squart if Zeela is so against it. What if she's right and it can be used as a weapon?"

"Oh, come on Chip! Don't take her side now." Lani jumped down onto the grating. "Anything can be used as a weapon nowadays. You can hit someone over the head with this wrench or fly this whole ship into a station." Lani put a hand onto Chip's shoulder. "We could really use the extra cash."

Zeela awoke with a cold. She was angry with herself for having fallen asleep in the sim-chamber again. She tuned off the rain and switched to a bathhouse where she rinsed her suit of the virtual mud that now stuck to her back. Then she made her way over to the medbay to get rid of the cold. She immediately felt better when the machine had given her the shot, but then a warning popped up on the holo-screen that the med-resources were running low. That would cost quite a bit to refill. Maybe Lani and Chip were right to sell the squart.

On "Rainy Days" | 2023-11-28

I wanted to revisit the sci-fi genre, because the first time around I had only had one character. I envisioned a whole crew, but it turned out a lot smaller again. It feels a bit cheap to throw around made up words like sim-chamber, squart and holo-screen, but I guess that's one way writers approach this genre?

I did write this story under a bit of time pressure, but I feel like it turned out quite dense. It's more open ended than others, but I feel like this works better than some of the "punchline endings" of other stories.

The other inspiration was just the word "rain" which made its way into the title in the end. (I title my stories after writing them.) I think that even though the setting is sci-fi this is more of a melancholy slice-of-life piece. That seems to be one of the themes with my writing this month.

Thoughts? Reach out via Mastodon @Optional@dice.camp or shoot me an email.