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31_days2008-02-02 06:47 pm
haitoku.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2008-02-02 06:47 pm
[FEB 02][SUNSHINE][SLEEPWALKING ACROSS THE UNIVERSE]
Title: Sleepwalking Across the Universe
Day/Theme: February 02; “What feeds me destroys me.”
Series/Fandom: Sunshine
Character: Capa
Rating: G
Word Count: 1,057
Note: This feels very unfinished to me, but alas, I have work to skip off to. :(
He doesn’t bother talking to anyone about it. How he sees it is, it isn’t that important, not in the grand scheme of things. Not in the face of everything they’ve set out to do. Not at all.
His personal problems pale in comparison. And if he’s being honest with himself, he probably endured worse during high school, during college, during grad school, all of which are more recent a past for him than they are for the rest of the crew.
Practically the second he descended the stairs, stage right, at Johns Hopkins University – Doctor Robert Capa, School of Arts and Scienes, Applied Stellar Physics – there were scouting agents from NASA, dressed primly in dark grey suits, accented by mid-tone dress shirts and the sheen of modestly-patterned silk ties, sweeping him up in a whirlwind of decisions, decisions, decisions. Maybe the youngest person to graduate the doctoral program at JHU, Robert Capa, nearly twenty-three years of age, looking a mite less wiry, malnourished, and unkempt for his cap and gown, hardly got to peck his mother on the cheek, hardly got to firmly shake his father’s hand.
He had called his parents two days afterward, his head filled to the brim with yet-vague mission briefings and all of the reasons dark matter could do the job – would do the job. Filled to the brim with all of the reasons he could and would do the job. “How does it feel to know your son’s going to save the world?” he had asked.
“Congratulations, graduate,” his father had said. “We love you. We’re very proud of you,” his mother had said, across the lines from California.
They never answered his question, still haven’t answered it but for the sad smiles that etch across both their care-worn faces in the communications packages they send out from Earth.
For three weeks after graduating, the third of his collegiate diplomas hanging thumb-tacked to the wall of his small quarters at Columbia University, the end of the parchment still stubbornly curling upward, Capa did not sleep. He simply lied in the springy twin bed given him, pressure point after uncomfortable pressure point hit, and ran the numbers through his head, thinking the hospitality extended to him by the GISS very much the same brand he suffered during his freshman year of undergraduate studies in the cramped dorms of UC Berkeley.
So, Capa thinks to himself aboard the Icarus II, you’ve dealt with worse. It’s only been two-and-a-half weeks.
After a month of no sleep, Searle takes him aside fifteen minutes before dinner, whisks him away into Cassie’s privacy quarters. Perhaps not the smartest move, invading one of their crewmates’ personal areas, but it won’t take more than five minutes, and Cassie is preoccupied by Mrs. Edward Rochester at the moment, Searle probably rationalizes.
“So, what’s got you so riled up you can’t – or aren’t – sleeping?” the psych officer asks, his query blunt. “Too many late-night keggers with the little green men?” he adds lamely, a proud grin blazing across his face despite his positively horrid joke.
Capa quips out a laugh indulgently. He likes Searle, despite the other man’s bad sense of humor. The two of them think on more or less the same level. They are both practical-minded and somewhat caustic in nature, but are not immune to the occasional moment of childish wonder, of awe at things much greater than themselves. The universe, for example. Capa has to remind himself that the man is a psychologist, that even in the companionable moments that they share, he is taking notes. Capa thinks that the Icarus Project couldn’t have found a man more suited for the job if they tried.
A moment of silence before Capa replies dumbly, completely belying his intelligence, “I don’t know.”
Searle’s brows knit further, and Capa folds to the itch to clarify.
“My mind, I can’t shut it off. Like it doesn’t know when to stop working anymore. It won’t let me rest.”
Capa isn’t that concerned about it, not like Icarus is, her tinny, placid voice reminding him every time he leaves his bunk that he requires six hours minimum of sleep to meet optimal productivity, that he has not met this requirement for over thirty-five days. As if he needs to be reliable at this point in the mission. They don’t even need him, in theory, until the moment of truth. Until he needs to flip those twenty-odd switches, until he needs to punch in those six-odd codes. Until he has to save the human race.
He supposes the dark shadows under his eyes do make him look a little more sickly than usual, though.
“Well,” Searle begins after regarding the young physicist sternly for a moment, rubbing his chin, “you know the rules: no drugs, so I can’t give you meds for it, but it sounds like your circadian rhythm’s off. It's pretty common for people in our position.”
Searle chuckles heartily to himself.
“You must have been one hell of a night owl…" Back on Earth, he implies, but doesn't say outright. Neither of them need the reminder that they're several million miles from home. "I think we might have some Valerian root or something, though. Hippie stuff, but it should do the job.”
And it does, for a time.
Four months in, he’s not sleeping again. He’s started to fantasize about ripping his brain right out of his skull. At first, they’re harmless musings, a personal joke, a scribbled, schoolboy’s comic strip.
Six months in, in the scant, scattered hours he does sleep, the nightmares begin. First, it’s the self-mutilation fantasies, in realistic, gory, completely humorless detail. Then, it’s a black void, either the vacuum of outer space or the inside of the Payload. He can’t tell which. As they approach their destination, his dreams finally give way to visions of himself free-falling into the sun, miraculously unscathed until he is swallowed up by the plasmatic sea of its surface.
Somehow, these dreams frighten him most of all.
But he doesn’t bother talking to anyone about it. How he sees it is, it isn’t that important, not in the grand scheme of things. Not in the face of everything they’ve set out to do. Not at all.
Day/Theme: February 02; “What feeds me destroys me.”
Series/Fandom: Sunshine
Character: Capa
Rating: G
Word Count: 1,057
Note: This feels very unfinished to me, but alas, I have work to skip off to. :(
He doesn’t bother talking to anyone about it. How he sees it is, it isn’t that important, not in the grand scheme of things. Not in the face of everything they’ve set out to do. Not at all.
His personal problems pale in comparison. And if he’s being honest with himself, he probably endured worse during high school, during college, during grad school, all of which are more recent a past for him than they are for the rest of the crew.
Practically the second he descended the stairs, stage right, at Johns Hopkins University – Doctor Robert Capa, School of Arts and Scienes, Applied Stellar Physics – there were scouting agents from NASA, dressed primly in dark grey suits, accented by mid-tone dress shirts and the sheen of modestly-patterned silk ties, sweeping him up in a whirlwind of decisions, decisions, decisions. Maybe the youngest person to graduate the doctoral program at JHU, Robert Capa, nearly twenty-three years of age, looking a mite less wiry, malnourished, and unkempt for his cap and gown, hardly got to peck his mother on the cheek, hardly got to firmly shake his father’s hand.
He had called his parents two days afterward, his head filled to the brim with yet-vague mission briefings and all of the reasons dark matter could do the job – would do the job. Filled to the brim with all of the reasons he could and would do the job. “How does it feel to know your son’s going to save the world?” he had asked.
“Congratulations, graduate,” his father had said. “We love you. We’re very proud of you,” his mother had said, across the lines from California.
They never answered his question, still haven’t answered it but for the sad smiles that etch across both their care-worn faces in the communications packages they send out from Earth.
For three weeks after graduating, the third of his collegiate diplomas hanging thumb-tacked to the wall of his small quarters at Columbia University, the end of the parchment still stubbornly curling upward, Capa did not sleep. He simply lied in the springy twin bed given him, pressure point after uncomfortable pressure point hit, and ran the numbers through his head, thinking the hospitality extended to him by the GISS very much the same brand he suffered during his freshman year of undergraduate studies in the cramped dorms of UC Berkeley.
So, Capa thinks to himself aboard the Icarus II, you’ve dealt with worse. It’s only been two-and-a-half weeks.
After a month of no sleep, Searle takes him aside fifteen minutes before dinner, whisks him away into Cassie’s privacy quarters. Perhaps not the smartest move, invading one of their crewmates’ personal areas, but it won’t take more than five minutes, and Cassie is preoccupied by Mrs. Edward Rochester at the moment, Searle probably rationalizes.
“So, what’s got you so riled up you can’t – or aren’t – sleeping?” the psych officer asks, his query blunt. “Too many late-night keggers with the little green men?” he adds lamely, a proud grin blazing across his face despite his positively horrid joke.
Capa quips out a laugh indulgently. He likes Searle, despite the other man’s bad sense of humor. The two of them think on more or less the same level. They are both practical-minded and somewhat caustic in nature, but are not immune to the occasional moment of childish wonder, of awe at things much greater than themselves. The universe, for example. Capa has to remind himself that the man is a psychologist, that even in the companionable moments that they share, he is taking notes. Capa thinks that the Icarus Project couldn’t have found a man more suited for the job if they tried.
A moment of silence before Capa replies dumbly, completely belying his intelligence, “I don’t know.”
Searle’s brows knit further, and Capa folds to the itch to clarify.
“My mind, I can’t shut it off. Like it doesn’t know when to stop working anymore. It won’t let me rest.”
Capa isn’t that concerned about it, not like Icarus is, her tinny, placid voice reminding him every time he leaves his bunk that he requires six hours minimum of sleep to meet optimal productivity, that he has not met this requirement for over thirty-five days. As if he needs to be reliable at this point in the mission. They don’t even need him, in theory, until the moment of truth. Until he needs to flip those twenty-odd switches, until he needs to punch in those six-odd codes. Until he has to save the human race.
He supposes the dark shadows under his eyes do make him look a little more sickly than usual, though.
“Well,” Searle begins after regarding the young physicist sternly for a moment, rubbing his chin, “you know the rules: no drugs, so I can’t give you meds for it, but it sounds like your circadian rhythm’s off. It's pretty common for people in our position.”
Searle chuckles heartily to himself.
“You must have been one hell of a night owl…" Back on Earth, he implies, but doesn't say outright. Neither of them need the reminder that they're several million miles from home. "I think we might have some Valerian root or something, though. Hippie stuff, but it should do the job.”
And it does, for a time.
Four months in, he’s not sleeping again. He’s started to fantasize about ripping his brain right out of his skull. At first, they’re harmless musings, a personal joke, a scribbled, schoolboy’s comic strip.
Six months in, in the scant, scattered hours he does sleep, the nightmares begin. First, it’s the self-mutilation fantasies, in realistic, gory, completely humorless detail. Then, it’s a black void, either the vacuum of outer space or the inside of the Payload. He can’t tell which. As they approach their destination, his dreams finally give way to visions of himself free-falling into the sun, miraculously unscathed until he is swallowed up by the plasmatic sea of its surface.
Somehow, these dreams frighten him most of all.
But he doesn’t bother talking to anyone about it. How he sees it is, it isn’t that important, not in the grand scheme of things. Not in the face of everything they’ve set out to do. Not at all.