2008 November 27

My required word count for each of the last three days is now more than I should be needing for the entire rest of the month. :(
It seems likely that I'll choose to not take part in the NaNo experience next year. I doubt I'll be motivated enough to sign up knowing how much of the month I'll slack off for. Having proved I can do it, at least three times, I don't feel the same testing of myself.

Words today: 3018
Total for the month so far: 34,149

By keeping the wedding small and simple it seemed we had managed to avoid a lot of the stress that would normally have occupied the planning stages. We still worried about a few things though, Mum still wasn't out of her cast so she could still have trouble walking normally when it came time for the ceremony. The rings had arrived though and we both thought they looked great, it was hard to not put mine on early, ostensibly for the purpose of ensuring it was the right size but Veronika told me that would be a bad idea.

The honeymoon had taken more effort to sort than expected as well, it wasn't hard to find places that looked nice near the waterfront but most were horrendously expensive and we couldn't see the point of spending that much money for a week away for the two of us. When we did find places that looked nice and were priced acceptably most of them were not free anywhere near the date we'd set for the wedding. We had started looking for alternatives, like near one of the big parks, when one of the places had a cancellation that suited us perfectly.

The other things, like suits for us guys and the bridesmaids dresses, catering and photography were all sorted apart from the final checks and so Veronika and I took a day off planning and decided to go for a walk. I let her lead the way and was surprised to be taken in the complete other direction to the park in which I'd proposed. We talked a little on the way, mostly about the little things we'd been ignoring for the prior months, like who was doing the shopping, cleaning etc. She also asked about the renovations/rearrangements she had been intending to make to the lounge and dining room before I so cleverly distracted her from thinking about such things. I burst out laughing when she made that accusation, after all it would have had to have been one of the stupidest possible means of getting her to stop changing things in my life.

It took quite a while for me to realise where we were heading, as I'd only been there once before, also at Veronikas insistence. Shortly after we'd met and begun to develop our friendship a mutual friend had been hit by a drunk driver, the week following that accident had been the worst time of my life, and, if anything, it had been far worse for Veronika. What I hadn't realised at the time of the accident was that she was interested in him and had been waiting for him to ask her out.

The two of them had talked while he was in the hospital and he'd admitted that he was afraid to ask her out, it seemed impossible to him that she would see him as anything other than a friend. A sentiment I understood all too well, it took me nearly two months after our first meetings to even invite Veronika to join Walter and couple of our other friends when we went to see a movie. Now, Veronika was wanting to say goodbye again.

Walking through between the headstones was at turns depressing and something I couldn't identify. There was an element of apprehension about it, but it wasn't simply that. When we got near to the grave Veronika let go of my hand and moved closer on her own. I didn't hear any of what she said but I figured it was along the lines of her saying she was happy, she missed him and hoped he was happy wherever he was now. That life after death thing was one of the reasons I'd wanted to avoid a church wedding, besides the obvious fact neither Veronika or myself were church goers, I had never seen any reason to believe that there was anything besides the life we lived.
After time had passed Veronika and I had agreed to disagree on that topic, there were so many others we could argue about effectively after all.

She looked at me with a question in her eyes as she rose back to her feet and started walking to me, wanting to know if I had anything I wanted to say. When I shook my head she frowned a little, shrugged her shoulders, grabbed my hand and started leading me away. The walk out of the cemetery passed quicker than the walk in had done which I attributed to recognising more of the surrounds and the desire I had to be out of there. Instead of heading home once we left however Veronika again took me somewhere I hadn't expected, this time to the archery range.

I doubt all of her motivation for us being there was my benefit although I had mentioned having a desire to try it a few times. There had been a few occasions in the past that I'd seen her rebuilding things, like chairs, and putting more force behind the joins than seemed absolutely necessary. While I felt that there wouldn't be the same physical release in archery as could be obtained by hitting things with a hammer it seemed plausible that putting holes in objects with sharp metal points would scratch a similar itch.

I was right about part of her motivation but looking at her I could tell that this wasn't new to her. I asked her about that and she mentioned the fact she had been an area representative when was still in high school. It hadn't seemed important since then and so she''d just let it go while she was studying and then didn't want to let me know that she'd already been after I expressed an interest. I wasn't surprised that she was good, it seemed that a strong upper body would be the biggest physical attribute required and Veronika had proven herself in that area a number of times since I first got to know her. On at least two occasions she'd been out for the evening with friends and heard guys talking about how much weaker women were.
Having dealt with a brother that thought similarly until she taught him otherwise, and having had enough to drink that she was less self-conscious than she'd normally have been, on each of those occasions she'd challenged the guys to a test of strength. All she'd get them to do was hang in a doorway, holding themselves up from the frame. Admittedly it was a little rigged in her favour by virtue of her weighing less and having smaller fingers but none of them were willing to try and use that as an excuse when they failed far earlier than her.

After about half an hour my arms were feeling really worn out, and I let Veronika know that I had had enough and would wait for her outside. After another minute or so she came out to join me, carrying one of the arrows. I'd somehow missed her bullseye shot and she had been given the arrow as a memento. I wondered what we'd have done next if instead of archery we'd been climbing, the walk home was slow enough with our legs not having really been used much.

Apart from starting some simple food cooking when we got back the first thing I did was go start a bath running, I knew at least one of us was going to want to take a bath to relax. I wasn't surprised to have Veronika come through and offer to play rock, paper, scissors for the privilege of going first, but I was figuring on dealing with the food first anyway so I let her go first. After all, if I was to go second I could take my time without worrying that Veronika was getting annoyed while waiting for her turn. It also allowed me time to deal with all the food instead of having to dump the responsibility for it on her.

When she came out of the bathroom, earlier than I'd expected, we sat down to eat and talked a little about the walk we'd been on. I was still surprised by the walk to the cemetery but had understood her desire to go there. Actually trying archery had also been very good, although I figured that I'd need to build up to the amount of time shooting it seemed Veronika could easily manage.

I was pushed down the hall when we'd finished eating and told to get myself some clean clothes. As I was getting some I heard the bath start running again and walked out slowly. Veronika put me on the basket and told me to just take my bath, she was going to deal with the dishes and then we could relax in the lounge for the rest of the evening.

I started drifting off not long after we sat down together and while Veronika put up with it for a few minutes the weight of my head upon her shoulder got to be annoying. The prodding served to make me a little more alert but I still needed to hear her a couple of times before I got up and went to bed.

With no particular plans for the next day I wasn't surprised to find Veronika in the kitchen when I made my way out. We'd had the option of going to visit my family that afternoon, but after the walking we'd done the day before neither of us felt like going anywhere. I mentioned the possibility of running the hot tub as it looked like the weather was going to be nice all day. Veronika said that it would be nice to see it running so she'd have a chance of getting it going herself if I was away on a nice day. I felt like a dolt then, we'd had some quite nice days that she could have enjoyed herself quite a bit in the tub. She told me it wasn't my fault though, having never asked about it she couldn't blame me for the lack of instruction.

I asked if we should invite anyone else around and she thought about it for a while. We didn't want to split the rest of my family and hers were to far away to have a visit from them be at all likely, even if they would be interested. Laura and co on the other hand were probably not busy and it was going to be good to see them again so Veronika made a phone call. The tub still hadn't heated up enough by the time they started showing up, apparently it was going to be more than just the three of them, four with the new flatmate. Almost everyone showed up with food though which was helpful, we could have easily fed the three I expected to show up but much more than that would have resulted in a need for at least one trip to the supermarket.

It didn't take long before people were getting into the hot tub even with it not really being ready yet, and I came to the conclusion that I probably wasn't going to be having much time in it until people went home. That irked me initially but when I saw how happy Veronika was talking with people I figured it didn't matter at all. For the three hours we had people there I ended up doing the host type things I'd managed to not do previously, bringing out food, making sure people weren't moving around in the house, cleaning up plates and the like. After everyone but Laura and her partner had left I stopped tidying up and went to join them in the tub. Veronika moved over to where I had sat and kissed my cheek, thanking me for the effort I'd been making.

Laura and Allan didn't stick around much longer after that and that time it was Veronika that showed them out. When she came back she asked how I felt the afternoon had gone. Honestly I was pleased, it hadn't been such that I wanted to repeat the experience every weekend but it had been good to do. And seeing her light up every time she spoke to someone new had on it's own been enough to make the effort worthwhile. We relaxed in the tub for another half hour or so, until Veronika felt her skin was "pruning" too much. Instead of draining the tub like I'd initially thought I would I just turned off the power and put the lid back on, figuring that when she returned home alone the next day it might be good for her to be able to relax for a while.


After being distracted over the weekend the Monday was among the longest of my life, and it seemed obvious that the rest of the research team were feeling similarly about it all. As the evening approached everyone started drifting into the main lab and even before the switch to start the wormhole was thrown everyone was looking towards the speakers.
Everyone but Kevin anyway, he only showed up at the appointed time, presumably having been working somewhere else or talking to his bosses or something. As he walked in he looked around and obviously seeing who and what he expected to reached out to start the wormhole generation. I think everyone had been expecting something more from him before we started for the evening but that wasn't really Kevin.

When the wormhole had grown to the expected size Kevin picked up the microphone again and asked if there was anyone at the other end. The voice we'd heard the last time responded and we heard another voice faintly in the background. Picking up on that Kevin suggested that it might be good to introduce some key members of each respective side. Starting with our side as a sign of good faith he gave his name as well as the three immediately beneath him, and surprising everyone in the room, my name as well. He did mention that there were a dozen others in the room but he always had trouble with names and didn't want to tax those on the other side. The voice was named then, Windcharger, and the secondary, somewhat feminine voice introduced herself as Styler. It was apparently just the two of them in their location, the technology on their end having become so common place that it didn't require many people to monitor it.

Conversation, and it really was a conversation instead of simple information exchange from then on, went around a number of topics. Only a small portion of which had anything to do with the wormhole itself, which I began to realise made sense from the perspective of Windcharger and Styler. They'd no doubt already worked out all the little issues we were going to have to figure out before we could do anything more than what we currently were.

One of the questions we weren't going to be given a straight answer to was where the two of them were in relation to us, or us to them. Styler gave a number of reasons, most of which I completely failed to understand although I did again see a number of people writing furiously as she listed off those reasons. The one that I did understand I happened to also agree with, the act of finding out how to determine relative locations over those distances (or dimensions) would prove far more enlightening than having the means just given to us.

As we'd been told the first time we were also not going to be given the information on how to safely transport people through the wormhole. Partly because the specifics depended on the biological make-up of the person involved and the two of them did agree that we would be unwise to let them know that level of detail about our biology. Kevin did ask if they would mind us sending something small through to see what would happen to it and was given an all clear to send anything at all. Kevin was taken aback at that, having expected to spend a while negotiating the specific molecular structure of whatever he'd send through to ensure it wasn't harmful.
Windcharger laughed at the implication they'd taken no precautions and let us know that it would possible for us to send through a bomb, if we could make one small enough, and it wouldn't affect them on the other side. He did ask how we were supposed to know how the passage of travel had affected the object, it wasn't as though we necessarily had anything in common as far as ordinary everyday objects were concerned.
Kevin's face dropped a little before Dan spoke up, suggesting that either Windcharger or Styler describe what they saw of the object once it had gone through. Again we heard the laughter and were told that we'd answered that question quicker than most of the other groups ever managed. Looking around for something to send through Kevin decided to just rip a piece of paper off the pad that was sitting untouched beside him. He explained that it would take a while to get it sent through, our facility was such that nobody could get within 10 metres of the wormhole apparatus while it was running.
It was a little easier getting the paper into the wormhole than Kevin had expected, getting it into the room was almost enough to have it transmitted through. Something none of us had bothered to notice was the wind currents present in the closed off room. Where the air was all coming from didn't register as an issue immediately though, we were just happy enough to have the paper absorbed by the wormhole and disappear from our sight.
Kevin let Windcharger and Styler know that we'd seen the paper disappear from our end and asked that they let us know when it arrived.