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Sophie
So, I finally had mysuitcase and had stepped out into Elora Station.
But that was as far as I’d gotten. About two freaking steps and then total stasis mode. But I couldn’t help it. This wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen in my twenty-six years of life so far.
This place was... breathtaking. In the literal sense of the word. I gasped, my chest heaving, as I tried to breathe around everything taking up all the space in my senses. I stared, slack-jawed, at the shining, stacked ring-like structure of the gigantic station I now found myself in. The layered rings of the station’s different levels went up and up and up. And down, I realized. I was about at the mid-point, here. The centre open space of the station was a column of nothing, interspersed with the up-and-down chug of hover-vator orbs. We had hover-vators at the factory at my old job, but they were old, clunky squares that shook as they moved through the air. Here, the egg-like shining hover-vator cars skimmed up and down easily, zipping people from one level to the next.
And, holy Terra, the people. So many of them! And so many different kinds! Terratribe 1 wasn’t much of a tourist destination, so it wasn’t often I got to see more than a few non-humans together at once. But here, it was probably equal numbers of humans and aliens. And those numbers were big ones. The crowd surged past me, carrying more species of creatures than I could even hope to count or recognize. I forced my floppy human mouth to close and swallowed, girding my loins. I was going to have to join that crowd, too, if I wanted to get anywhere.
OK, here we go, I told myself, taking a huge breath. And with that, I stepped quickly into the churning crowds, dragging my suitcase behind me.
So far so good. I settled into a quick rhythm among the chaos, the heels of my boots clacking as people chatted and laughed all around me. I was on the outskirts of the crowd, really, near the edge of the ring, so I was able to check out all the stores and restaurants as I passed. I’ll have to come back when I have time off and I don’t have my bag, I thought, my eyes popping out of my skull, as I passed shining store window after extraordinary cafe.
I turned my attention forward once again as I walked, only to be greeted by a gigantic glowing sign, right in front of my face. I squawked, flinching to the side to avoid impact, toppling into a heap with my suitcase and taking down another hapless shopper with me.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, scooting up and away from the unfortunate casualty of my clumsiness. As I stood, I checked over my shoulder to make sure I wouldn’t crash into the sign again, only to see that it wasn’t there.
What on Terra...?
“All is forgiven. I am not injured.” The person, who I now saw was a slim Navaret woman, chirruped from below me, her words translated by my inner-ear translation device. I reached down to help her, and she took my human hand in her bright orange, clawed one. It was hard to tell if she was smiling with her beak-like mouth, but I decided, embarrassed, that she didn’t look angry, at least.
“I’m so sorry about that,” I babbled again, reaching to my suitcase handle now that I knew she was OK. “I didn’t see that sign before. Or, I thought I saw a sign...”
“They are holograms. Projected advertisements. You can pass through them unharmed,” she said, her fluffy royal-blue feathers smoothing atop her head and down the back of her neck.
“Oh,” I said, flushing again, feeling like a total Terratribe rube. But we just didn’t have stuff like this in the manufacturing sector of New Toronto. I looked around, noticing for the first time the bright rectangles of light and colour appearing in the crowd, right in front of shoppers’ faces, before stuttering into nothingness once more only to reappear somewhere else. Most people walked right through them.
“Is this your first time on the station?” The Navaret woman probed, fixing her four blue eyes on me. Thankfully, unlike a lot of the people passing me by right now, she was about my height, so I didn’t have to feel any smaller than I already did.
“Yes, how can you tell?” I joked, letting out an awkward laugh.
“Well, toppling over at your first flash of a holographic advertisement was my first indication,” she replied. The skin at the side of her beak pulled slightly, and I decided that, yes, she was definitely smiling. Thankfully.
“I’m Sophie,” I said. “I’m from Terratribe 1. I’m here on a seasonal work contract.”
“I am Novara-Lei of Navaret. My husband and I own a Navaret salt and spice dispensary on the 1114th level.”
“Oh, wow,” I said nodding. That sounded really flipping cool to me. “So you live here full-time?”
“Most of the time, yes. We live on the station.” She cocked her narrow head at me. “Do you need assistance finding your quarters?”
“Honestly, that would be amazing if you don’t mind,” I said with a grateful smile. I’d jumped into the crowd without much of a plan, trying to take in all the sights and sounds. But really, it would probably be best now to just dump my bag on the floor of my own room and crash into bed
“Follow me,” she said. I did so, tracking my eyes over her form as she moved ahead of me. She was mostly humanoid in shape, with two legs and two arms. But instead of hair, she had that shockingly blue tract of feathers down the back of her head. Those were her only feathers, the rest of her covered in smooth, orange hide. Her hands and feet were bird-like and clawed. She wore no shoes, and in terms of clothing wore only a loose white suit of flowing pants and matching tank top-style shirt.
Novara-Lei led me through the crowds to the centre of the ring. We stepped up to the bars that would keep us from toppling thousands of metres downward to the lower levels. Within seconds of us stepping up to the bars, a round hover-vator car sped upwards, stopping in front of us and thrumming. The bars slipped down and away as the hover-vator car opened, allowing us to step inside.
Once inside, the hover-vator snapped shut, enclosing us in its round space. But it didn’t feel claustrophobic – not at all. The station had to accommodate aliens of all sizes, and I’d already seen some big ones. So the inside of this sphere felt wide and bright and open. Though it also felt quiet, almost mercifully so, after the din of outside.
“Which level?” Novara-Lei asked.
“Oh,” I fumbled in the front compartment of my suitcase, dragging out my personal tablet and checking the instructions I’d been sent about my quarters. “Level 200, room 2670.”
Amazingly, the hover-vator shook itself into movement just from the sound of my voice. Back home, we had to manually key in destinations for our hover-vators.
The hover-vator’s transparent walls allowed me to look out at everything flashing past as we hurtled downwards. I had to keep myself from pressing my nose to the clear, rounded wall. I didn’t need to look like any more of a Terratribe bumpkin than I was sure I already did in front of my new, elegant friend.
In no time at all, the hover-vator car was stopping, opening its shell for us and allowing us to step out. Things were much quieter on this level, and I let out a small breath. A few people passed here and there, but it was nothing like the chaos of the shopping levels above.
