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“Welcome to your new home,” Stratt had said, four months ago when he had landed down on the aircraft hanger for the first time.
He had protested a little beforehand, to his credit. He did not particularly want to spend the next few years of his life in the middle of the ocean on a military vessel away from everything he had ever known and loved. When she had first informed him that’s where they were headed, he’d balked at the idea.
“Listen, I know it’s a top-secret government project, but can I be anywhere else but a boat? Surely there are inland facilities for this, right?”
“No,” Stratt had said. “You live here now.”
In the end, it wasn’t as hard of an adjustment as he assumed it might’ve been. It was more like living in a research lab facility rather than living in what he pictured military vessels to be like. It sort of brought him back to his PhD days, even. He spent many, many nights sleeping in his tiny office at the research building rather than bothering to go back to his apartment. He knew several other PhD candidates that did the same. It was kind of like that all over again. He was still a little homesick sometimes—unlike his PhD days, he couldn’t choose to bike to his favorite places to eat when he felt cooped-up. He couldn’t pause what he was doing to go take a 20 minute walk on some nice tree-shaded path in a park by his building. Most of the time he couldn’t even look out a window. It was still fundamentally a military hangar ship, for all its otherwise top-of-the-line design that made it suitable for scientists and government officials to convene and live there.
What was a slightly hard adjustment, however, was getting used to living in a building that could go days where it was noticeably swaying.
To be fair to it, the hangar was not a rough sailing experience. It was actually extremely smooth. And the boat didn’t rock in the way that most thinner, taller vessels did—it wasn’t choppy. Most days you didn’t feel that you were on the water at all. But that didn’t save him all the time. Patches of rough water or stormy weather would make the entire thing slowly roll and pitch the whole day, dipping far to one side and then easing back to a far dip on the other side. It didn’t make him feel too good.
And, unfortunately, today looked like it was going to be one of those days. It was fine in the early morning—but as he was sitting at his desk, doing mostly spreadsheet work, he could tell the sea was getting a little bad. And then it got a little worse, over the next hour or two. And then a little worse, before it capped out at a steady level of bad.
That sort of wobbly, shaky feeling signature to motion sickness had settled into his body. It was very comparable, he’d say, to the experience of when you have just stepped off a slightly nauseating theme park or carnival ride. Which was a situation he’d been in a few times in his life against his preferences.
He used to occasionally chaperone students at theme parks during the outings towards summer break. The few weeks after standardized testing season was over, and he didn’t have much to teach, and the students were all rightfully getting extremely antsy. It made keeping everyone’s attention consistently in the classroom a nightmare, so field trip outings were as much a break for him in some ways as they were a break for his students. Amusement parks could only really justify being a “learning experience” by claiming engineering or physics relevance, which meant it fell under the vague “science” umbrella, which meant Grace was sent along. Not that he was complaining. More than anything he loved watching the kids run around and have a blast there. He really fondly looks back on it.
They weren’t very instructional outings. Usually a good half of the students in his group would lose focus almost immediately any time he would try to tie something back to a physics concept, which was fine. Most of teaching is giving information in short bursts, again and again, to have them pick up on it over time. But students losing focus usually meant that one of them would interject to ask if they could go off to ride something with their friends, or interject to ask if Grace would go on something with the group. He used to occasionally humor it, but would happily get away with declining if they let him. Most rides didn’t totally agree with him, especially after he had entered his 30s. And he never found them super fun anyway.
Certainly some rides were worse than others. Those vortex things were a hard no, he’d learned. The only time he’d ever been convinced to get onto one, assuming he would probably be able to get away with it, he was sick into the bushes immediately afterwards. He spent most of the day after that point nursing water.
Grace was jarred out of this train of thought when the hangar, as if trying to cruelly remind him of exactly where he was and how far away he lived from stable dry land now, rocked dramatically to the side. A particularly strong wave must’ve broken on the right of the ship. The pencils and pens scattered on his desk were quickly sent rolling towards the edge.
He grabbed at them. Two of them he caught in time, and the third one clattered to the floor. He left it there, because the quick movement to attempt to catch them had made him feel off-kilter. He figured that bending down right now would be inadvisable.
Instead, he battened down the rest of what was on his messy desk. He haphazardly pushed any free objects off into the drawers, and he held his coffee cup between his thighs to keep it from spilling. Behind him, he heard some other things on other desks go falling to the floor, and he cringed, hoping none of it was important or fragile or both. No shattering sounds, though, which was good.
Hangars are very long and very wide. Center of gravity is low and it would take immense force to really knock one around—that wave must have been massive. He vaguely knows the physics of it.
Anything that floats displaces water, and the total amount of that water displaced creates a buoyant force that keeps something from sinking. Or fails to keep it from sinking, if the force isn’t enough. Like how everything has a center of gravity relative to its shape and mass, anything floating has a center of buoyancy underneath the water. If a strong enough wave hits the hull of a ship, it shifts both the center of gravity above water and the center of buoyancy below water away from each other, which causes a rebound sway to bring those points close together again. Lower center of gravity is better because the points will always be relatively close together, so there’s less need for correction, and more stability.
It’s leaps and bounds better than any other ship in the world would probably be faring right now, but the waves out there are huge and long and slow, which is straining the hangar’s ability to stay stable and causing large corrections.
Ugh. He didn’t really want to think about it anymore. He shifted his focus back to his laptop.
Despite his best efforts, he only got about an hour more of work out of himself. Staring at a fixed document on his screen while his inner ears let him know in no uncertain terms that he was being swayed about was starting to make him a worrying level of queasy. And a headache had been added to the mix at some point, too—probably also from the hangar’s movement, though he has to admit that having only coffee and some Twizzlers today likely contributed.
He needed a break. He shut his laptop and closed his eyes, rubbing at his temple. Then he laid his head down right there on his desk, hoping that shutting out the visuals that weren’t in accord with the movement his body was feeling would fix things a little. Just for a bit.
…And he earnestly, sincerely did not mean to fall asleep doing this. It really wasn’t in the plan. But the feeling of drifting off and having his headache and nausea fade into a background hum was such a respite that he more or less just let it happen. He had no clue how long he had been out for when he was suddenly woken up by loud knocking on the frame of his office door to the side of him. He startled up.
“Doctor Grace. Sleeping on the job, I see.” It was Stratt. Stratt was looking at him from the doorway. Carl was just behind her in the hall.
He sheepishly, awkwardly went to explain. “The, uh, weather is getting to me a little.”
“This is not that bad,” Stratt said, expression completely blank as always. “We re-routed to avoid hurricane weather. That would have been bad.”
Grace turned to Carl. “Come on, tell her to cut me some slack, Carl. This is kinda bad, right?”
He silently took one hand out of his pants pockets and rocked it in the gesture of “eh, so-so,” before sticking it back into the pocket. Then he said, “But you should go lay down. Or sit by the windows. You look pale.”
Grace just nodded.
He knows he has some Dramamine with his things, back at his room. But getting that would require having the willpower to get up and go to his room first. He tries an alternative.
“Either of you wouldn’t happen to have meds for this with you, right?”
Stratt looked back at Carl. Carl shook his head no. “Sorry,” he added. “Medical is handing them out, though.”
Ah. Medical was further from his room, so it looks like his first plan is the most ideal one after all.
“We’ll round again later.” Stratt said. “We were just checking in. Be mindful of leaving delicate lab equipment out at the moment, Doctor Grace.”
Grace gave a thumbs-up. Then Stratt and Carl left down the hall with no more fanfare.
His vestibular system had caught back up to him quickly during this little conversation. It was as if, rather than functioning as a reset, that nap had just worked to push all the nausea down the line for him to deal with when he woke up. The sudden awakening probably didn’t help either. His head felt remarkably foggy and dizzy, for just sitting there still in his chair.
It’s because of this that he really felt like he might end up puking if he stood up and walked down the hall. But waiting will not make it any better, so he wobbled to a stand. Getting back to his room sooner was better.
It didn’t go great. When he rounded the corner from his door out into the hallway, a swell knocked him a little off-balance: he had to momentarily put his hand against the wall to steady himself. He was stumbling like a baby deer.
By the time he had made it back to his room, he felt nauseous enough that taking a sip of tap water to swallow the meds put him extremely close to vomiting. He had to stand over the sink for a moment with his eyes closed, breathing steadily. When it passed, he immediately dragged himself to bed. Getting horizontal sounded like the only tolerable position to be in.
Several hours later, his co-workers had noticed his absence.
“Have you seen Doctor Grace since this afternoon?” Stratt asked.
“No,” Carl said.
“Go find him and check on him, will you?” was her order.
Grace wasn’t in his office or any of the nearby surrounding labs, which was Carl’s first and most optimistic guess. Grace’s room was the guess next in line. He headed straight for it.
When he rocked up to his door, he knocked twice, and waited. A very muffled, low “Come in” sounded out from the inside. The door was unlocked when Carl turned the handle.
The lights were dim in the room. One light affixed to the wall by Grace’s bed was all that illuminated it, everything else was turned off. Grace, for his part, was laying flat on top of his bedsheets, one arm draped over his eyes. He did not turn his head to face Carl.
“No better, I take it?”
“No.” He swallowed. “Ugh. The meds haven’t done anything… but y’know. Took ‘m when I had already started feeling sick.”
“It’ll be about a week of weather like this.”
“Oh please, don’t tell me that.”
“I can soften the blow. Listen, I’ll put in a request for someone to run you a scopolamine patch. Might at least put you back on your feet.”
“You’re a lifesaver. Sorry, I know ’m holding things up.”
“No need for sorry. Just take it easy. Someone will be by soon to drop patches off for you.”
“Tell Stratt I’m sorry, at least?”
“No,” he said. Then he paused. “I’m out of here. Shoot me a text if you need anything.”
Grace held up his hands and put them together in a little heart symbol. This did make Carl ever so slightly chuckle, which is exactly what he was hoping for. Then he heard the door shut.
The next morning, thank God, Grace was capable of showing his face. He was a bit of a zombie, spaced-out and tired, but Carl was right about the patch getting him back on his feet, at least. He certainly wasn’t producing his best work, but he was capable of working. Capable of attending meetings. Capable of eating now, too, which he was thankful for when Carl brought him lunch later that day. Cafeteria sandwiches.
“You’re looking more alive,” he said.
“I think I still look terrible, so I would hate to know what I looked like yesterday for you to say that,” he smiled.
“Bad. Very bad. Nearly green.”
“Thanks for the honesty,” Grace said. He took a bite of the sandwich that Carl had put on his desk.
Carl patted him once on the shoulder. “Anytime.”