Ricki Tarr (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rickitikitarr) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
reverienet2018-06-08 07:12 pm
rickitikitarr) wrote in reverienet2018-06-08 07:12 pm
voice: un: thomas
Being here reminds me a little of the time I spent working in Kowloon. The walled city is an old Song military outpost in Hong Kong, that everyone poured into some centuries ago. Instead of sprawling out the town went dense, some thousands of refugees pouring their way in and cramping in tight up against one another. I was there in '63, well after the fires and before the police started bothering the cathouses and opium dens.
[Ricki's voice is low, and close to the communicator. The hour is late, and he sounds tired, like he's sitting alone with a drink. His accent is fuzzy, too, British-Australian via Penang, Singapore, others. Indistinct, impossible to place, and cultivated over the years into something level and hypnotic.]
There were thirty thousand people in less than three hundred buildings, piled so tall and crisscrossed with laundry and walkways so thick that sunlight seldom reached the lower levels. You stepped from single cobblestone to cobblestone or else splashed through shallow puddles by the light of the few flourescent bulbs that had been wired in to light the lower market stalls.
[There's pause, and then a quick breath, like he's shaking himself out of it. He doesn't quite chuckle, but you can hear that it's a near thing.]
I'd take that over this if I could. We're just as flourescent and barely lit, but the food was better. My Cantonese is shit, I can order tea and apologize sincerely, but I still think I understood more there than I do here. Better bars, too.
[Ricki's voice is low, and close to the communicator. The hour is late, and he sounds tired, like he's sitting alone with a drink. His accent is fuzzy, too, British-Australian via Penang, Singapore, others. Indistinct, impossible to place, and cultivated over the years into something level and hypnotic.]
There were thirty thousand people in less than three hundred buildings, piled so tall and crisscrossed with laundry and walkways so thick that sunlight seldom reached the lower levels. You stepped from single cobblestone to cobblestone or else splashed through shallow puddles by the light of the few flourescent bulbs that had been wired in to light the lower market stalls.
[There's pause, and then a quick breath, like he's shaking himself out of it. He doesn't quite chuckle, but you can hear that it's a near thing.]
I'd take that over this if I could. We're just as flourescent and barely lit, but the food was better. My Cantonese is shit, I can order tea and apologize sincerely, but I still think I understood more there than I do here. Better bars, too.
voice; un: topCHOIce
Though hey, are you a novelist or something? You kind of sound like one with how you were describing everything.
no subject
[Of a kind, anyways.]
The alcohol's also nearly gone. I wonder if we're going to resupply.
no subject
And if we did it probably wouldn't be any better than what we've got now, right?
no subject
[Mildly.]
Better, no, but people won't like it if the county goes completely dry, I do predict.
no subject
no subject
no subject
Wait, but we're in the middle of space. What happens when we run out?
no subject
[Answers Ricki, raising an eyebrow.]
no subject
[ Hesitating. What does he mean? ]
There's something we can do about it before it gets to that point, right?
no subject
[He asks, and that eyebrow goes a little higher.]
no subject
[ Probably... ]
no subject
It might be worth a post, actually.
no subject
[ Someone who has actual ideas, and leadership skills, and isn't Hyunseok... ]
no subject
You'd really better make a post, raise the question, tackle the problem.
no subject
[ Bites as the inside of his lip. He is entirely unprepared to lead any sort of important discussion. ]
I guess so.