Sensory Alterations

by Meyari McFarland

  A Whole New World

  "Would…" Kalila asked, her voice breaking on the first word so she cleared her throat to continue. "Would you like to visit the hydroponics with me? They are open to visitors after hours, you know."

  Tinesha's heart leaped into her throat. The sheer thought of getting to see plants, touch them, to be around green growing things had her pulse pounding in her ears. It was an offer that Tinesha would never refuse but to get to visit with Kalila made it all the better and all the more impossible to speak. Words wouldn't come so Tinesha nodded urgently. Kalila laughed softly and gathered up her tray. Her inviting smile had Tinesha on her feet to follow her.

  "Let's go," Kalila said.

  Sensory Alterations

  By Meyari McFarland

  The beautiful cover was created by the incredibly talented MG Nemesi. You can find more of her work at mgnemesi.deviantart.com or on her site dreamchasing.altervista.org. Thank you for your beautiful work, Neme!

  Copyright ©2013 by Mary Raichle

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be emailed to me_ya_ri@yahoo.com

  This book is also available in trade paperback form.

  This one is dedicated to my friend JC. Hope that you like it, sweetie!

  IT WAS THE SMELLS that made it impossible to adjust to her new life on the space station. Tinesha had had high hopes when she joined the station building program. A new life in a new place with adventure and excitement were just what she'd been hoping for. She took all the tests and passed with flying colors, even the physical tests that made her sweat worse than weeding the garden behind her family's home in the middle of August.

  The trip from her home outside of Seattle to the training center had been a medley of stale air, bland food and the smell of too many bodies crammed into too small a space. Once at the training center, Tinesha had gladly thrown herself into the many things she needed to learn. She'd noticed that the center smelled of antiseptic and new plastics instead of rain or moss or even other people.

  It was scrubbed so clean so often that there were no smells of anything else left. That made sense given that they wanted all the recruits to be as healthy as possible before shipping out to the stations under construction in orbit between Mars and Earth. It had been a minor irritant, that lack of the moist smell of rain clouds moving in, the absence of musty earth and moss. Tinesha would deal with it for the chance to do something totally new.

  By the time they arrived at their assigned station, Tinesha had grown aware of a deep hunger for smells that she couldn't find in her environment. There were no green growing things smelling of pollen and damp earth. All the plants were grown hydroponically and she wasn't assigned to tending them. The food came wrapped in plastic, perfectly balanced and nutritious but the smells of it were off, bland, wan compared to what she was used to. Even the air made the back of her nose itch for the lack of dust.

  "I don't think I can do this," Tinesha murmured as she sniffed the air in hope of something more than metal, the plastic wrap over her lunch tray and the scent of her deodorant.

  "Can't do what?" Riyad asked as he settled into the seat opposite Tinesha. "The food? Granted, this is worse than normal. I think they bleached it while they cooked it or something."

  His sister Kalila sat next to Tinesha, nose wrinkled as she pulled the plastic off her tray of food. They had both been on the station for several years, since construction began.

  From the beginning, Riyad had worked in Engineering and Kalila in the hydroponic gardens that supplied the majority of their food and air. While Tinesha had joined the construction effort halfway through the build, both Riyad and Kalila had been here since the first sparsely furnished module was filled with stale canned air from the previous station in the growing ring between Mars and Earth.

  They had watched the station grow from a tiny set of living quarters attached to a construction dock into the rapidly filling framework that it was today. Tinesha wasn't sure that she would have been able to handle such an alien environment, especially when she was having trouble with the station as it was now.

  At least now there were halls she could wander through after work, two entertainment centers where she could socialize, and enough room that she didn't feel cramped. The earliest phases of station construction had to be hell. Everything would be plastic and metal, the scent of welding so heavy in the air that it stained the back of your throat.

  Tinesha found herself leaning closer to Kalila simply to catch a whiff of the light fragrance that Kalila wore. It was such a nice change after the lack of pleasant smells that she didn't realize at first that she was doing it. Kalila glanced sidelong at Tinesha, her cheeks going pink, but she didn't comment. Aware of herself now, Tinesha settled back into her seat only to find herself edging slightly closer to Kalila again. Maybe it wasn't a fragrance; it could simply be the smell of the plants that Kalila had been working with during the morning.

  "Tinesha?" Riyad asked. "Hello? You in there?"

  "Oh, sorry," Tinesha said, finally registering his questions. "I'm just having trouble adjusting to life on the station, that's all. I'm sure I'll get over it eventually."

  "The lack of color?" Kalila asked, her voice low and demure, matching her simple hijab and plain uniform.

  "The lack of smells," Tinesha admitted with a wave at everything, nothing, the bland surroundings of the cafeteria and the people filling it.

  Her cheeks went bright red as both Kalila and Riyad stared at her. Riyad looked amused by the thought of someone missing scent in their environment but then he usually looked amused by the things Tinesha said and did. Kalila frowned at Tinesha, concern clear on her face.

  The siblings had befriended Tinesha her third day on the station, when she was still stumbling from transit weakness. She'd spent most of their first conversation speaking in a too-loud voice because of her automatic effort to be heard over the sound of the engines that weren't there anymore. It had taken Kalila putting one small, delicate hand on Tinesha's arm for her to realize that she'd nearly shouted everything she said to them.

  Their wry smiles had softened Tinesha's embarrassed blush. That was the first time she'd noticed that Kalila smelled of flowers and some indefinable musky scent that she had yet to identify.

  "Your nose is that sensitive?" Kalila asked, one bite of the bland lunch frozen halfway to her mouth.

  "I didn't think so," Tinesha said as she poked her lunch with her fork. It looked as though it would devolve into undifferentiated grey goo at any moment. "But that seems to be what's giving me problems. More than the work or the environment being so foreign or anything so far."

  "Why?" Riyad asked.

  He ate his lunch with machine-like efficiency, chewing and swallowing as if the oily taste of the casserole didn't exist. Tinesha admired his ability to do that but she had to put her fork down after only a half dozen bites. She simply couldn't eat something so bland and flavorless. Kalila smiled sympa-thetically at Tinesha but she still nudged Tinesha's elbow.

  "Eat it," Kalila said. "You need the nutrients. This cook will be rotated to a different station in a couple of days. Someone new will come and we will have edible food again."

  "It tastes like cardboard and smells like oil," Tinesha grumbled as she picked up her fork to try again. The handle was slightly sticky, as if the casserole had somehow contaminated it. "I just… I miss the smell of rain. The way the air gets wet and cold. I never thought I'd miss moss after ba
ttling it for so many years back home but it has a scent, earthy and scratchy at the back of your nose. I miss it."

  "That matters?" Riyad asked. "Missing a smell?"

  He scraped his tray for the last morsels of food, grinning when Tinesha gave him the rest of his casserole after one bite that made her gorge rise to burn at the back of her throat. Even the water she drank to wash it down was tasteless, lacking minerals or chlorine since it was distilled from their waste water and respiration.

  At least the dessert, a traditional Japanese wagashi in the shape of a cherry bud with tiny green leaves, had some taste and texture. It wasn't as sweet as an American candy but it had just the right amount of sugar to relax her palate and was crunchy enough to make it a joy after the horrible casserole.

  "It does to me," Tinesha said after swallowing the candy. "I never realized it until I got here. Smells were always just there, around me."

  "Huh," Riyad said. He waved his fork at Kalila. "Kalila had problems with the lack of colors. I miss having music around during the day. My boss hates hearing music on the job. Won't even let us wear headphones while we work."

  Kalila put her candy on Tinesha's tray, smiling at the surprised look Tinesha gave her. They spent the rest of their lunch period listening to Riyad complaining about his boss, Morishita Masa, and her insistence on people from every country on Earth following Japanese cultural norms.

  He was of the opinion that they should be able to listen to their own music and make their own food at will, despite the difficulty of allowing such a thing in a station that was under construction. In Riyad's opinion if the suites would eventually be given kitchens then they should have them now so that they could eat what they liked.

  There was no point in arguing with him. Riyad wouldn't listen. He had his opinions and they were right, regardless of any evidence to the contrary. Tinesha thought that perhaps it was his way of dealing with the strangeness of their environment, just as Kalila's stubborn adherence to wearing the hijab when she never had before arriving on the station was hers.

  "You will adjust in time," Kalila said after lunch was over and they all left the cafeteria to return to their stations. "Give yourself a bit. You've only been here a couple of weeks."

  "I hope so," Tinesha sighed. She paused at the intersection where Kalila would go right while Tinesha went left. Riyad waved at them as he hurried straight onwards towards the engineering core. "It's hard. I feel like I'm starved for smells."

  "Find the smells you like," Kalila suggested with a nod of under-standing. "Hoard them. Indulge yourself in those smells when you are off duty. We all have our things that we seek out, Tinesha. When you find your things you will be all right. You will adjust."

  The thought of finding scents to enjoy followed Tinesha to her job. Once in her space suit, Tinesha snorted. No, the smell of old sweat and today's lunch was definitely not a smell she liked. A bit more of the wagashi would have made it bearable so perhaps sweet things were in order. She could certainly order in something from Earth, even if the transit delay meant that she'd be waiting for several months to get it.

  One of the nicest things about working on the station, Tinesha thought as she carefully maneuvered a section of plate into place for the welders to attach, was that she could do the same job that any man could. In microgravity it wasn't your strength but your dexterity and ability to plan trajectories that mattered. Tinesha was very good at that. So was their lead, ensuring that her team was always on schedule or slightly ahead.

  By the time they'd placed and secured their planned eight panels, Tinesha's hair was wet from sweat. The suit's air filtration system had long since lost the battle against Tinesha's body odor. It was familiar, oddly comforting, though it would have been better with the feel of mud under her nails and the smell of rain around her. Maybe she should ask for permission to grow her own plants in her quarters. That'd give her the earthy smell she missed so badly.

  Tinesha did her best not to look away from the work as they maneuvered their last panel into place. The vast expanses of space around them always made her stomach roil with instinctive fear. The rest of her crew seemed to react in similar ways to the vastness around them. No one looked up and away from the station as they worked.

  Granted, the stars were brilliant points of light that looked like diamonds spread across velvet but the way the stars surrounded her, extending above, below and to either side out to infinity was over-whelming. It was easier to focus on the station's grid of girders and plates, the bulk of the habitable section that stretched out like an enormous tin can. Maybe once the station was done and they had the planned observation deck in place it would be easier to look out at the universe but for now Tinesha avoided looking anywhere but where she was working. It was just too exposed out here for the view to be comfortable.

  "Good job, everyone," Riyad called over the comms. "That's today's lot. Everything secure out there?"

  The teams sounded off as they verified that their welds were secure and that they'd accounted for each and every tool. Every loose piece of debris became a dangerous projectile that they would inevitably encounter in the future. That had been drilled into Tinesha's head from the moment she'd joined the program. Sometimes she dreamed about the lectures they'd gotten with their graphic pictures of impact injuries and explosive decompression. Those nights Tinesha got up and exercised; sleep was impossible after dreaming about Riyad and Kalila with those injuries.

  Her team nodded as they checked their tools, then the welds. Tinesha took her turn checking that there were no weak spots, no holes that would let out precious air, following along behind her teammates as they crisscrossed their section. Everything checked out.

  She noticed on one pass that Team Eleven wasn't doing the redundant checks where team members followed one another with the scanners but didn't comment until they were back in the airlock. She switched her comm to private, tapping her lead Vince's shoulder to get him to do the same.

  "What's up, kiddo?" Vince asked.

  "I ah, noticed that Team Eleven didn't do redundant checks," Tinesha said, nervousness burning at the back of her throat. "Is that okay?"

  "Yeah, I saw that too," Vince sighed. "I'll inform the boss, have her talk to them. Getting sloppy endangers us all. Thanks for speaking up, kiddo."

  "You're welcome, sir," Tinesha said.

  The airlock cycled open, letting them step back into their self-contained world. As soon as they were out, it shut again so that the next group of construction workers could come back inside. Tinesha followed Vince through the hallway leading to the locker room. The others pulled their helmets off immediately, taking big gulps of air while smiling brightly. Eventually, Tinesha followed suit but her automatic gulp of fresh air was followed by a grimace.

  To her, the sweat in her helmet smelled better than the antiseptically clean hallway with its plastic and scorched metal smells from the welding. She almost welcomed the faint hints of melted metal for the way it drove out the bland scent of plastic around them. Tinesha thought this area wouldn't smell right until the bare plastic walls were covered with more welcoming materials.

  After stripping her suit off and making sure that there was no damage from her afternoon in microgravity, Tinesha made her way to the showers. At least here there was the smell of water that she so missed, drifting around her along with the scent of antibacterial soap and sweaty bodies. Tinesha hummed quietly as she showered, stretching out her shower by shutting the water off so that she could scrub every inch of her body at her leisure. The locker room's stalls were so much larger than her suite's shower.

  The sheer physical pleasure of washing herself clean while surrounded by cool, damp air calmed Tinesha down dramatically. When she closed her eyes it felt like home. She could almost smell the cloudburst coming in, could almost imagine that any moment the roof would start drumming with raindrops pounding down. Tinesha smiled, breathing deep as she lost herself in the memory of home.

  "Look, you can't keep
doing that," Vince said outside her stall. "I know you're going back to Earth on the next ship but our lives are on the line here. You can't cut corners, Jacob."

  "We checked the damned welds," Jacob snapped, belligerent enough that Tinesha didn't reach out to turn on the water again. "It's fine. Nobody's going to fucking die, you worry-wart. I'm no murderer and you know it."

  "The protocols exist for a reason," Vince said, his voice sounding farther away. "Jacob, damn it, stop! This is important."

  Tinesha peeked around the shower curtain just in time to see Vince following Jacob out of the locker room. She frowned as she turned the water back on. For once, the water falling over her body as she rinsed off didn't relax her. Everyone else was long gone so no one else had heard what they'd said. The knowledge that she'd overheard a private conver-sation didn't bother her half as much as the content of what Vince had said.

  It had happened before? On other sections of the station? Which sections? Had anyone gone back to verify the strength of the welds that Jacob's team had worked on? Tinesha worried the questions and fears in her mind as she dried off, dressed and then went from the bland white walls of the construction zone back into the better decorated living areas of the station.

  Her nose itched when the smell of the plastic under-walls was replaced by the faint smell of the woven grass wall coverings that someone thought was more appealing than proper sheetrock. Granted it was much lighter and could be made locally but the oddness of it always caught her when she made the transition from construction zone to living areas.

  At least dinner was marginally more appetizing than lunch had been, even if Tinesha was among the last people to arrive in the cafeteria. This time Tinesha could recognize the tater tots in her casserole though she wouldn't have wagered on her ability to identify the meat. The cook had included green peppers, though, so there was more than enough taste and smell to make Tinesha happy. Better still, the entire cafeteria was filled with the smell of dinner. It seemed like most of the others had used a lot of pepper on their food because she sneezed several times from the scent of pepper tickling her nose.