Working on the following bit of Chapter 11 where Lurol enters the :

Her porch gave onto a simple patio with table and chairs that opened directly into their living room. Lurol hesitated with her hand on the see-through door. She could order it open with a word, or by hand. But she felt paralyzed.

Editing this, it struck me that Reetions on planet typically manipulate doors manually. On space stations there are no doors except to individual quarters or in places where noise might be a problem (gym). Why have doors anywhere that is more transparent than STI 2? It strikes me that opening and closing doors is a physically meaningful activity, like walking, which it makes no sense to eliminate from daily living. Reetions are well-balanced types who don't replace everything with mechanized solutions just because they can -- a la "the machine stops". They do, however, use arbiter support to redress disabilities, so I think it is reasonable that access would be situationally automat"able". If someone like Europa - in Second Contact - visited Lurol's home, the door would open for her, whereas the default for able-bodied people would be to let them open it themselves. Reetion philosophy is always one of personal choice with resulting consequences, so the option of deciding you felt like having the door opened for you would be there. Since it consumes a resource (arbiter attention) and is not the recommended thing to do (participaction!) there would be some small debit against your account, but a trivial one. Toddlers would discover they could order doors opened and closed and have to be taught - both by parents and arbiters - not to abuse the privilege. Much as we teach our toddlers not to open and close fridge doors for the heck of it. As Dependant Citizens, children would be exempt many of the consequences of their actions, with referral to their parents for attention, or to other community resources if parents could not cope.

posted by Lynda at 13:40   comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments