Well, today, I managed to make quota a little easier than my slog on Monday. I think this is because I was able to produce a lot of verbage describing a new location and its inhabitants for John to meet and greet. I could have written a little more but I felt my energies flagging a bit.
I have a tiny excerpt of the drivel I am writing in the extended entry.
The actual physical experience of being on a ship inside the Manifold was not quite what John had expected, either. Certainly, he had been warned that differences in physical constants made for a slightly altered experience, but aside from slight differences in the perception of light, and a slightly decreased sense of gravity, John didn't notice any difference. Personally, he thought that it was more of a psychosomatic thing, himself. The need to believe that the physical laws of the Manifold brane were slightly different, and thus people naturally tried to notice slight differences that might not really be perceivable. After all, John, reasoned, a slightly different value of c shouldn't truly matter that much in the long run. It was the geometry of the Manifold brane that allowed for the shortcut with respect to normal space, not any major loosening of the laws of physics.
In point of fact, from John's point of view, nothing changed much on board ship during this short period. He had been instructed to run additional tests and checks on biological samples, and Dr. Michiba saw each of the crewmembers every second day. There was still much to be learned about this new technology, it had been characterized by one of the popular science writers of the day as "a piece of 23rd century Science fallen through time into the late 21st century present."
John was pleased when he managed to win the second chess game with Li, managing to checkmate her King, finally, on the forty-fifth move. In the meantime, Michiba's game with Paulsen was going more slowly, John expected that the Go game would probably last through much of the expedition before being completed.
Doctor Holbrook regretted that he didn't have the opportunity to propose a tiebreaker game with Colonel Qin before the day came to exit the Manifold brane, and reenter the physical universe in the Epsilon Eridani system.