substitutable | voicemail/ic contact

Yeah. Do you need something?

It depends if you were planning to sleep soon.

No. I'll have to get used to being in space more to be able to sleep. What is it?

I wanted to see something. If you aren't sleeping, maybe...

Sure. Give me a few minutes. Where are you going?

I was going to take a look around. I'll meet you observatory.

Got it. I'll be there.

[He heads out!! He'll be leaning against one wall of the observatory staring out the window when Shinji gets there!]

[And Shinji will arrive, carrying a large, rolled-up poster of some sort under his arm and two telescopes! What could this be for??]

Shintaro, hey.

[What's that poster for? Shintaro gets off the wall and raises his eyebrow at it, but he doesn't ask just yet.]

Hey. It's the first time you've called me out somewhere.

... is it? [He hadn't thought about it.] Sorry. I should've let you know ahead of time.

Don't worry about it. Not we're square.

So what do you need?

[He takes a moment to think about how he wants to phrase this.] When I was little I liked looking at the stars.

[A beat.] I wanted to see if I could see any from here.

From here? [He grins.] Well, I'm pretty sure we can. Some of them at least... some of them would look different though.

I thought so. [He couldn't see them as well when they arrived at the base. It came as an afterthought after standing at the observatory for the first few hours, looking down at Earth, wondering if he'd be able to see the nuclear strike from this orbit.

In any case, he came prepared. Shifting his arm, he holds up the poster.]

... I don't know if it'll be any help. But I found a map a few months back...

A star map? [He turns his attention to the poster in Shinji's arms, curiosity peaked. He's never thought about stars, having never looked out the window in the past and having kept his curtains closed since that day.

But this was one of the few times Shinji has expressed interest like this. And that's nice. He nods and motions toward one of the large windows.]

Let's try it.

[He nods, expression brightening a little as he heads over to the window. The map aside from the cello had been one of the few things he looked for right away, but the constant dreary atmosphere of Exsilium prevented the right viewing conditions for the seeing the sky at all, much less stars. So, up until now, he hasn't had the chance to test the map's accuracy.]

The stars won't be in the same position as the map... but I think we can identify some of them and figure it out from there.

Most stars are far away enough, right? I mean, I only know a little bit about astronomy so I can't tell you a whole lot, but it's worth a try. [He follows, hands at his sides and relaxed. Yeah. This is nice. It's a lot nicer than anything else they can do in space.]

It's fine. We'll make it work. [For once, he sounds confident about something. Looking out the window, he sets the map down on a bench and begins setting up the telescope.]

All we need to do is identify the most prominent ones.

[The confidence in Shinji's voice is surprising. He's heard determination and stubbornness from the kid before, but not confidence. It's not a bad sound.]

All right. Tell me anything you want me to do.

Um... [Where to start? Well...] ... we should look for the brightest stars. I think Sirius, Arcturus... they'd be our best bet. [He looks out the window.]

It's not too bad here.

Well, we don't have to worry about clouds at least, right? No atmosphere and all.

[He turns his attention to Shinji's map.] All right, which ones are we looking for?

[He points out on the map where the stars they're looking for are.]

These ones. Visibility is fine, since the observatory's on the moon's dark side. Picking them out will be a little hard, but it's not impossible...

[He tries to remember what little he knows from astronomy articles. What they needed were coordinates, but those would be inaccurate because of their altitude.]

All right. Let's try it -- which way are we facing...?

[The tablet's handy for this purpose--he takes it out and brings up the compass.]

... right now, we're east. So these stars over there... will probably be shifted this way...

[They've determined the direction. Shintaro nods and glances at the compass as well to calculate the degree of the shift, tracing lines with his fingers on the map and doing whatever math is necessary in his head before he points.]

Try pointing the telescope in that direction.

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