Time And The Ship

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 9.

This chapter opens:

"Time and the ship passed onward through space." (p. 137)

The ship moved through space over a period of time. Motion is change of the spatial relationship called position. Without change, there would be no time. Time does not move anywhere. It is the relationship between states changed from and states changed to. States include spatial relationships.

However, "Time..." in the opening sentence refers to the succession of experiences of a viewpoint character and the second sentence identifies the viewpoint character of this chapter:

"Nicol's waking hours went almost entirely to preparing himself." (ibid.)

It is his experience of preparation that moves through space with the ship. The third and fourth sentences take us as readers further into Nicol's experience and into a particular personal relationship:

"Sometimes, though, nature demanded he take a few of them off.

"He lay with Falaire in her cabin." (ibid.)

Nicol and Falaire are enclosed not by bare bulkheads but by a moving 3D forest with a night sky and a breeze bearing spicy odours. Lunarians' lives are spent entirely within artificial but nevertheless spacious and colourful environments.