[two cards. A kind of person. A Location. Entomologist. Train station.]

Alex Karotov stepped out of the train into station three.

No matter how he steeled himself, the change in orientation jarred him, from
the smooth, windowless, clean compartment, into the equally clean station
corridor, but from square and expected and normal to, a moment later staring
up at the floor tilting away up into the distance, like an Escher painting
brought to life.

Normal. The word stuck in his mind. "Nothing about my life is going to be
normal for a while", he thought.

The station was a wheel, the usual design that engineers imagined in their
spare time three quarters of a century ago, and now real. If you looked up,
out the ever-present strip of window in the ceiling, you could see the
structures running to the hub, and past that, the still unfinished section
of the wheel. They say it will be done this year. The last of the raw
materials arrived at the same time he had, from the opposite direction.

Next to the unfinished section -- just an eighth of the wheel now! -- he
spotted the station he'd just left, station seven, and a handful of people,
standing with their feet pointed up as far as his point of view was, though
she was as upside-down as they were. The enormity of the place was
overwhelming. An entire city. More people than the university employed
worked in each section. All in what was, in essence, one building. A
building so big that there are buildings inside it.

"Starting to adjust?" Director Livinggood's voice sounded behind him. 

"I am. I think." Not really, he thought, but it wasn't going to affect his
work, so it really wasn't any of his business. He was so far out of his
comfort zone, there was really no measuring it anymore without using numbers
only engineers and mathematicians wanted to play with.

_I'm supposed to be digging in dirt and sifting through slime. Not drifting
around the largest cleanroom ever built, looking at one of two kinds of bugs
they have here._

It was an honor to be chosen, really. The applicant pool had been huge, and
the study came with a stipend so large that nobody could refuse to try for
it. The entire entomology department from UIUC had applied! Every last one
of them.

"Top of your class, double major in Microbiology and Entomology. And a
recommendation from top professors at a dozen universities. You come highly
recommended, Doctor."

"Thanks." He tried to keep his voice bright even as he felt another wave of
nausea. He wasn't sure if those endless committee meetings had actually paid
off now, or if he'd just used all his connections to get himself a six month
trip to a mind-bending, gut-wrenching bump in his career.

"Let me show you to your room. It's in the unit next to the lab. Convenient,
yes?" The director's thick German accent showed through in his deep
voice once in a while. It suited the big man.

At least there wouldn't be a trip on the train between sleep and work. Alex
wasn't sure if he could deal with it if there was. Already, he was homesick
for Indiana, and he thought it wasn't possible to be homesick for Indiana.

The station had no day and no night, officially. People kept whatever hours
they felt like. It was dark for four hours out of twenty-four, when the
station passed behind the earth and out of the sun, but the rest of the
time, if you wanted dark, you made it yourself.

By his own reckoning, it was a bit past midnight, though he'd dutifully
synchronized his watch to UTC before boarding the flight up here, so it read
06:09. He was exhausted. 

"Another thing to get used to, I suppose" he thought.

The dorm rooms were surprisingly small and spartan. A desk. A bed that
folded away. A door to a shared bathroom. Not much else.

Shared bathrooms. He'd managed to avoid those since his second year of
undergrad. At least everyone here was on the pathologically clean side,
rather than slovenly. Untidy apartments near the univeristy in Austin,
shared six ways, among students who barely knew each other. This was better.

"Have a good morning, Doctor. I will be leavink you to rest." The Director
padded out silently.

He laid down on the bed and was asleep within minutes.