Thirty Eight

While Solomon had mitigated the symptoms of his hangover to a bearable degree, they still stuck with him, simmering underneath the surface. Those who dance must pay the piper, and Solomon seemed to be in a state of sticker shock from his entertainment bill. To make going out in the sun feasible to any degree, Solomon used a pair of polarized sunglasses that he had fashioned.
Normally, the lenses and frames of an artifact of this nature would be crafted from injection molded polycarbonate and polyvinyl chloride. Convenient coatings and films embedded in the lenses would let certain wavelengths of light through to to dance upon the retina, the rest would be reflected callously into deep space. In this world devoid of such amenities, Solomon had to make due with more natural materials.
While a blindfold would have been ideal for riding out his affliction, it simply wouldn’t let enough light through for him to carry out his duties as leader. He used something that begrudgingly let the meagerest amount of light through to his unbearably sensitive optic nerves. To do this he used a piece of ancient technology. Not ancient as in the recent collapse of modern society, but truly ancient referring to technology that made its way to the Americas strapped to the faces of people trudging over the Bering land bridge.
What Solomon had strapped to his face was an intricately carved piece of moose antler that hugged the complicated geometry surrounding his eyes. Moose antler itself could be considered to be infinitely opaque.
To let the bare minimum amount of light through to allow him to go about his day, he had carved a single horizontal slit in this antler for each eye. This had a number of benefits. The meager amount of light that made it through this slit was horizontally polarized, this reduced glare and made seeing into bodies of water in the midday sun incredibly easy. The slits also formed a sort of camera obscura that had the effect of curing the slight case of myopia that Solomon suffered from. While this technology was originally invented for use in the mitigation of snow blindness, using them to stave off the symptoms of a hangover was creative and effective. They also looked unbelievably cool and were the height of post apocalyptic fashion.
With his glasses donned and Fyndraxis in tow, Solomon headed to the site where Bird had chosen to erect the yurt that he had provided for her. Steady progress had been made throughout the morning in its construction. The lattice that served as walls was erected and bound in the proper way. Roxy was up on a ladder accepting rafters to be fastened in place to form the roof. Once that work was finished, no doubt a number of people would be summoned to do the business of wrapping the yurt with whatever material they had chosen.
“I would like for my morning ritual to stay between us. I don’t want Liberty to know about it, and I have convinced everyone else that I spend my mornings in meditation on the nature of the universe. Which is kind of true,” Solomon stated before they were within earshot of Bird and Roxy.
“What morning ritual?” Fyndraxis played along.
“Good answer,” Solomon shot back with a smile.
“How’s the struggle against the inevitable?” Solomon called out to the pair erecting the yurt in defiance of the force that the G worshipped.
“Almost ready to wrap it if we can find some help,” Bird claimed as she handed another rafter up to Roxy.
Fyndraxis heard a familiar sound, it was the gentle knock on port 22 that let him know that Terra, a couple hundred kilometers above him, was ready for a chat. With Bird and Solomon otherwise occupied, Fyndraxis had the leisure time to make this a nice long chat where they could do some real planning and exchange actual information.