I’m playing around with a second person POV for Diana in Netwalking Space. Enjoy!
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The small chapel on DIR 1 stinks. Sweat, fear, organic smells from the biospheres, and the faint acrid whiff from the chip manufacturing wings all seem to concentrate here. You drop to the prie-dieu’s kneeler in front of the cross, old knees stiff and sore even in the lighter gravity of space. Space. The place your granddaughter loves, almost more than any others.
You dredge your rosary out from the depths of your right pocket and lean on the prie-dieu’s shelf, bowing your head as you sort out the beads. This morning you have felt the growing oppressive rumble of the Gizmo deep inside yourself. It woke you early, before your alarm, and you lay in your bed, listening to the hisses and clanks and pops of a working space station as the rumble rose in your head.
Sarah kept it out. But she kept other things from you, things deep and dark and hidden. No matter what your daughter says about how a Netwalker and host can’t hide things from each other, you know differently. Sarah holds secrets. She always has. Now she’s corrupting your granddaughter.
The Gizmo inside you grumbles even more at the thought of granddaughter. Melanie wasn’t a good daughter in that respect. She resisted the need to expose your granddaughter to the Gizmo, to make certain that Bess never introduced dangerous elements to the virtual world. Bess—and her cousin Chris—are among the Netwalk users the Gizmo doesn’t know. That’s dangerous.
Your head hurts even more and you drop it into your hands. Agony pulses through you in great rumbles. It lasts a few moments, and then you can raise your head, pick up the beads with heavy fingers, and begin the Our Father, proceeding to contemplate the Sorrowful Mysteries.
You have finished your third decade when an alert flashes across your overlays. You blink it away. Your staff will handle it. This is Bess’s station, not yours, and you’re just a figurehead. If they need you, someone will come.
