OOM: Settling in.
After Sam leaves - Cal finds himself at something of a loss, after Sam leaves.
(It was hard not to follow him back through the door, harder to watch it close, but Cal stayed. The point of being here, after all, is to be here.)
It isn't that there's nothing to do. There's an overwhelming number of things to do, most of them boiling down to learning about his new world. He doesn't know where to start.
In Milliways, he got used to not spending much time in his room, with only his own company. So he goes out a lot, spending most of those first few days exploring the neighborhood, looking more closely at the parts he already found with Bela and Sam as well as going out further, checking out blocks he hasn't been to yet. He makes note of stores and restaurants that he'll want to go back to, and of more purely residential areas that don't hold much of interest.
(Three blocks away from his building is a small, unassuming church; maybe someday he'll look closely enough to spot the noticeboard, and the notice about the Narcotics Anonymous meetings held every week in the basement.)
On the third day, his gaze finally focuses on the sign in the coffee shop across from his building, the one that advertises free wireless internet with purchase. It comes as a relief; he's been wanting to try out the internet some more, but when he is in his apartment, he can't settle down long enough to concentrate on much of anything. He spends a few hours there that day with his laptop, and finds the the noise of the customers and machinery and ambient music helps him to focus. Another thing he got used to in Milliways.
He also meets a couple of the other tenants in the building. Next door is James, who has a four-year-old son he sees every other weekend. Julie and Ayuko live in the apartment above Cal; he hasn't met Ayuko yet, but he has a brief conversation with Julie at the front entrance, where she apologizes for the odd hours they keep and hopes they won't disturb him. They work from home, she says, doing something with computer software that makes Cal nod politely and wonder if he'd understand better if he really were from 2007. There are plenty of others, in several stories' worth of apartments. Some he'll meet later, he supposes, and some won't be interested in meeting much of anyone. The real world - any real world - isn't half so social a place as Milliways. That much Cal remembers and is expecting, and finds that people still seem friendlier here than they did at home. His old world. He wonders how much of is a difference between worlds, and how much of it has to do with the company he kept.
When he decides, finally, to make a list of things he should do - what he needs to know about the most, what can wait, where to learn about it - he discovers that those days of exploring have laid a foundation. Without even realizing it, he's already gotten started. The feeling of being overwhelmed begins to lessen, and Cal begins, at last, to believe that his life on this world will eventually click into place. It isn't home now, but, someday, maybe it will be.
(It was hard not to follow him back through the door, harder to watch it close, but Cal stayed. The point of being here, after all, is to be here.)
It isn't that there's nothing to do. There's an overwhelming number of things to do, most of them boiling down to learning about his new world. He doesn't know where to start.
In Milliways, he got used to not spending much time in his room, with only his own company. So he goes out a lot, spending most of those first few days exploring the neighborhood, looking more closely at the parts he already found with Bela and Sam as well as going out further, checking out blocks he hasn't been to yet. He makes note of stores and restaurants that he'll want to go back to, and of more purely residential areas that don't hold much of interest.
(Three blocks away from his building is a small, unassuming church; maybe someday he'll look closely enough to spot the noticeboard, and the notice about the Narcotics Anonymous meetings held every week in the basement.)
On the third day, his gaze finally focuses on the sign in the coffee shop across from his building, the one that advertises free wireless internet with purchase. It comes as a relief; he's been wanting to try out the internet some more, but when he is in his apartment, he can't settle down long enough to concentrate on much of anything. He spends a few hours there that day with his laptop, and finds the the noise of the customers and machinery and ambient music helps him to focus. Another thing he got used to in Milliways.
He also meets a couple of the other tenants in the building. Next door is James, who has a four-year-old son he sees every other weekend. Julie and Ayuko live in the apartment above Cal; he hasn't met Ayuko yet, but he has a brief conversation with Julie at the front entrance, where she apologizes for the odd hours they keep and hopes they won't disturb him. They work from home, she says, doing something with computer software that makes Cal nod politely and wonder if he'd understand better if he really were from 2007. There are plenty of others, in several stories' worth of apartments. Some he'll meet later, he supposes, and some won't be interested in meeting much of anyone. The real world - any real world - isn't half so social a place as Milliways. That much Cal remembers and is expecting, and finds that people still seem friendlier here than they did at home. His old world. He wonders how much of is a difference between worlds, and how much of it has to do with the company he kept.
When he decides, finally, to make a list of things he should do - what he needs to know about the most, what can wait, where to learn about it - he discovers that those days of exploring have laid a foundation. Without even realizing it, he's already gotten started. The feeling of being overwhelmed begins to lessen, and Cal begins, at last, to believe that his life on this world will eventually click into place. It isn't home now, but, someday, maybe it will be.