Aim
lives in a three story building with Rocket, Fallon, and Sprigget. The
first floor is The Shop. The shop always smells like grease. It’s lit
with florescent lamps, a rarity in the city. There are several tables,
always covered by Sprigget’s little inventions and experiments. There
roof is very high, and there is a large garage door to allow large
vehicles to enter and exit via the wide dirt road in front of the
building. There is also a front door that leads to a small reception
area, but it’s not regularly used.
They often keep the garage door
closed to keep prying eyes out, but there are many vents at the top that
let in breeze and streams of sunlight. It’s often very hot in the
hangar since it’s hard to air condition such a large space, but they
have several fans that they turn on during the day time.
The building
has electricity from the city, but it’s often shoddy, especially in
recent times, so they often rely on a generator they keep in the
basement. The generator collects energy from solar panels and can be
used when switched on. The basement is concealed because that is where
they store illegal goods.
There is a set of old metal stairs that lead
up to the second floor. Sprigget lives on the first floor in a back room
that is also his lab, but on the second floor Rocket and Fallon live.
There is a common area that functions as a “living room” of sorts, with
an old well-loved couch and a small table that’s always covered, and
also as a kitchen, with a large sink, a small ice box, a cooking stove,
and plenty of cabinets to hold dried food. The floor is worn clay
(it is concrete down stairs.)
This is one of the few buildings that
still have working plumbing, running water, and gas. This floor also
always smells of grease, but less potent due to the higher elevation and
the open windows. There is a set of three doors. One leads to a small
bathroom that is very utilitarian in style. The other two lead to Rocket
and Fallon’s rooms. There is a small spiral staircase made of iron and
wood that leads to Aim’s room on the top floor.
The top floor is only
one room, once an attic and now Aim’s space. There are still crates in
this room, remnants from before she moved in, that she uses as chairs
and tables or storage place. She does not know the actual content of the
boxes and is not too concerned with it, since she was told by Rocket when she first arrived
that they were just junk parts and she hasn't thought of it much since.
Aim’s bed is a single mattress on the
floor with a few thick wool blankets, one red, blue, and the other grey.
She has a single feather-stuffed pillow. She considers her bed a
luxery. Aim’s room has several small windows to let in light and fresh
air. Being at the top of the house, it is usually very hot in here in the day time, so
she does not spend much time in her room. However, she always opens the
windows to keep it as cool as possible. She does have a set of wooden
doors that open up to the second-floor roof. From this angle, she can
see most of the street in either direction. She finds this high vantage
point comforting, and will sometimes in the summer nights step out and
sit on the rooftop and observe the quiet surroundings and listen to the
wind that’s constantly moving past the buildings.
Aim’s room is quiet at
all times of the day. Often unoccupied, on the uppermost floor away
from the bustle of the street and the hammering down stairs. The walls
are whitewashed, but haven’t been repainted in a very long time. As a
result, they tend to have a warmish yellow orange color due to the
collection of sands that were carried on the wind. Aim does not leave
papers or other possible flying objects in the open in her room. Aim
spends time in her room to sleep, and in the mornings and evenings when
it’s not overwhelmingly hot there.
The morning is her favorite time of
the day, though she often sleeps through it, because a thin amount of
dew collects in the room and feels good on her skin. She does have a
mirror on the wall that she uses to check herself in the morning. It
hangs next to the door, at the foot of her bed so that when she sits up
in the morning she’s forced to look at herself. There are also several
drawings of interesting schematics drawn by Sprigget that she has
collected and securely tacked to her walls. The paper is thin and
delicate due to heat and wind, but she keeps them up nonetheless.
The
floor here is wood that creeks under her feet. When she paces at
night, Rocket can hear her movements above him, though he hasn’t said
anything about it. The ceiling is bare white with wooden beams.
The
building as a whole has a stone construction with the top two floors
being constructed with packed clay walls. The ceilings are held up by wooden
beams, and the doors leading to the outside are made of wood, but the
doors on the inside are simply thick cloths hung from the doorway and
pulled aside in the day time to allow a cross breeze filter through. The
floor of the second and third floor is covered by a tight-woven
straw-ish mat that is worn down where people usually walk.
Aim has an
empty crate turned on its side that operates as a nightstand and a
storage area for her few personal possessions. She keeps the possessions
in the crate with the opening facing her bed. The gas and plumbing
doesn’t reach this floor, so she has a small oil lamp sitting on top of
the crate that she can use for light at night. Her windows do have
drapes but they’re never drawn, even when she’s changing clothing.
Outside on the roof, she has access to an emergency escape ladder. It is
made of metal, but is largely unused so it’s slightly corroded by the
wind and sand. The bottom half of the ladder is pulled up and held by a
crank that she has access to from the rooftop. The building only has
three floors, but it is four stories tall due to the large garage.
Aim’s
favorite place is in the crow’s nest on the train. Sitting in the worn,
padded chair, slightly reclined with feet set on control peddles ready
to swing her in every direction, this is the place where Aim finds the
most value in her existence. Sharp reflexes, intelligent mind, and skill
with the nest makes her feel worthy of the space she takes up in the
world. The nest sits atop the first car of the train. It is a large
circular platform with gears underneath that allows it to rotate 270*
left or right.
The nest features two things, the controller's chair and
the giant launcher for the electromagnet used to reel in beetles. The
controller’s chair is leaned back, ergonomically designed to keep the
individual well seated even when jostled about. There is a harness that
buckles in the center over the driver’s sternum. A pole stems from the
back of the chair and has a sheet of glass that wraps around the chair
at eye-level. When the computer is turned on, it displays information
about the landscape and, primarily, the target specified by the
controller. There are two large levers used to control the nest. The
levers are used to adjust the angle of the electromagnet. There are
buttons on top of the handles that Aim must press down on to launch the
magnet. The rotation of the nest is controlled by the foot pedals, which
are pressed down on to direct which way to turn the nest and how
quickly.
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