The Boring Bits

I’m back, with my regular insight into the mind of a Space Lord. What can I tell you this time? I was pondering that last night, and I concluded that perhaps, when you’re reading of my exploits, you begin to wonder how I fill the more mundane portions of my day. So here’s a run-down of a typical day, chez Dszira.

Sleeping arrangements

I prefer to sleep in a flat gravity region – this is what you would probably call “floating”, although that’s not really accurate because if you’re floating in Earth’s gravity that usually means there’s some motive power holding you up, which in turn means that you’re still experiencing acceleration and it just feels as if you’re lying on a bed, even though there’s nothing below you. In my case I use a genuine gravity planer, which creates a region of flat spacetime, so that my body responds exactly as if I were in intergalactic space without any nearby gravitational bodies. This isn’t recommended for human beings over the long haul, since it interferes with their growth and all sorts of health issues arise with weakened bone structure etc. Needless to say, I’m fine on it – except for a minor impact on my circulatory system, which must be corrected for during the first hour or so after rising, by means of artificial pumps. Since I’m already a cyborg to some extent, this isn’t a big deal. I had the pumps fitted after graduating, when I decided that travelling was my thing. I find the absence of gravitational gradients during sleep to be beneficial enough to make it worthwhile. There’s less cause for interrupted sleep or distraction of any kind, and if I happen to be recovering from an injury it also helps to reduce the pain.

Waking up

My alarm is internal and works silently, by stimulating my brain into a wakeful state. This has the advantage that it can be programmed to wake me more slowly if it’s likely to be a lazy day without any urgent work. Generally I like to rise fairly early by human standards – around 5 a.m. I usually get about five hours of sleep a night, but I’m capable of spending at least a week without any sleep with hardly any ill effects, so it’s quite easy to adapt to whatever crisis is plaguing me by simply putting more waking hours into working on it.

Breakfast

It’s quite hard to describe the food I like to eat in terms that would make sense to you, but a lot of it is constructed from Earth proteins and various substances commonly found on riverbanks. Every now and then I have to harvest things and fill up my processor, but I’m fine as long as nobody sees me carrying armfuls of vegetation down the road. Of course, it’s much easier now I live in a mountain, as you can imagine.

Not everything I eat is alien to Earth, of course. I like a lot of your food, and although I have a slight problem with Marmite (see my previous account), I can consume almost all of your standard fare if I have to. Coffee is awesome and always features in my mornings – and I love a spot of whisky in it now and then.

Morning routine

These days I tend to spend an hour in meditation, unless there are any alerts on my console. It’s something I never used to do until my sabbatical with Jalaa: she’s reminded me of certain good habits that I’d neglected in my zest for adventure. It might disappoint you, given my description of the sleeping arrangements, to learn that I don’t meditate while floating in mid air. I find gravity to be very important for me to feel grounded during the process.

Following meditation, if there are any urgent messages or sensor reports to attend to, I’ll divert my day into one of action. For example, if the police scanner has picked up news of the Feds entering the system, I’ll often need to find out what they’re up to. If not, I often go out for a walk to get some Solshine and exercise.

Lunch

I skip lunch. What’s the point of the thing? It gets in the way of important projects.

Afternoon and early evening

This is time spent studying and working on projects – sometimes writing these blog entries. I have a very focused mind and can work for hours without getting diverted.

Late evening

I like to “switch off” if I’m not doing anything important, so that means playing a game, or making music, or perhaps browsing through Earth entertainment channels to find out what you strange apes are obsessing over at the moment. I find your news channels laughably incomplete, your dramas educational, and your educational content far too rare – but I do like to keep up. Sometimes I join in on the web with some social media conversations. If you ever think you’ve spotted one of my secret identities, then perhaps you have. No prizes, though.

There, that was probably more boring than you’d anticipated, right? You thought I’d be playing 5D chess with AIs and secretly taking trips to neighbouring star systems to destroy things, didn’t you? Well… I’m neither confirming nor denying those possibilities. This post was meant to be about the mundane stuff anyway.