To say he woke up would imply that he had ever been asleep, which would be quite a generous overstatement of the truth. Like every other night since they had landed on the sea of Oobleck, his rising was more akin to giving up on sleep than rousing from it. He was no engineer, but the landing vehicle could have done with a significant amount of redesign. He nearly lost his balance when, in his exhausted state, he forgot to continue walking with the landing vehicle as it continued its steady rolling over the Oobleck outside.
He glanced up at his fellow astronaut. She had devised a kind of cocoon that left her hanging horizontally in the center of the hollow sphere, attached to its walls by tight ropes and bungee cords. This worked out fairly well so long as the sphere continued to roll orthogonal to her body, rolling her over and over as if she were rolling over in her sleep. What he couldn't handle about this system was when the ball decided to change direction, rolling the person in the cocoon head over foot. Even constantly rolling about on the floor was preferable to that for him.

He always naturally ended up somewhere near the bottom of the sphere despite the slightly reduced gravity. He climbed up the wall a slight bit to reach the control panel and re-aligned the spin of the sphere with his running track, a thin swatch of rubberized floor that ran all the way around the inside of the module. He noticed that his fellow astronaut had chosen this direction as her preferred rolling direction, probably so that she could sleep through his workout. She had a lot of ingenuity, he had to admit, but almost all of it was used in the service of laziness. He started off running, adding energy to the ambient movement of the ball and speeding its movement across the Oobleck. As long as he was running he could keep the spin from drifting off axis. Ever since before he had left for space exercise had become a central theme in his life. He had been very eager to go adventuring on faraway planets, but he always intended to return to the Earth. If he wanted to return to Earth after such a long time in reduced gravity, he had to keep his heart and bones in excellent shape. Otherwise, upon his return, his heart would be unable to pump his blood against the pull of Earth's gravity, and his weakened bones wouldn't be able to withstand the weight of his own body. He wondered if his colleague ever intended to return to Earth: she had been slacking on her exercise regime since the beginning. Did she want to die here, on this endless ocean of Oobleck? He could imagine her doing it- running one day out over the surface of the Oobleck, then stopping there and looking back at him while the green Oobleck sucked her down.

Like any non-newtonian liquid, Oobleck's viscosity changes depending on how fast you are straining it. If you run quickly, Oobleck is a solid. If you run too slowly, it is a suffocating liquid- you sink slowly and any sharp movements cause you to be trapped in a solid cast of strain-hardened Oobleck.

That was the reason for the design of the spacecraft --any stationary craft would have long ago sunk into the Oobleck-- this hamster ball of a landing module avoided this peril by staying constantly in motion and spreading its weight out on the submerged part of the hemisphere. There must have been some way to design a part of the module that didn't rotate with the spaceship, offering some modicum of peace and stillness.

Then again, they'd never meant for humans to occupy this module for this long, either.

Did you write this? It's good...

Oobleck is a funny name, though. :P Reminds me of Flubber and Oompa Loompas...
» randomjunk on 2008-03-20 11:28:32

I love me some dilatant fluids.

Incidentally, I also love me some classic(ally CRAZY!) Theodore Geisel.
» ranor on 2008-03-21 12:11:56

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