Since the matter of scum barges have come up in my game, why not brainstorm a bit about interesting interiors in these flying refugee camps? We have discussed it before, but pieces of local color are always fun.
* The overloaded public fabber. Everybody wants to make stuff, and the ship have few good fabbers. So this is like the laundry room, with people hanging out, bickering and (when things crash) shouting for the engineer to fix it.
* The runaway fungal colony. Sure, biotech shrooms are fun. And very good at getting a foothold wherever cleaning isn't so good. And whoever introduced Agathidium rumsfeldi to control them completely messed up the biology (it is a slime mold beetle, not a fungus beetle!). Now little beetles are happily going for biodegradable blobjects instead.
* The graffiti contests on the hull: Sure, AR overlays can show things in 3D, but you can paint so vivid things in vacuum, under the unflinching light of the sun or the pinkish glow of Jupiter. Nanoparticle paint was *made* for decorating hulls.
* Bot-hoarding. Sure, the bots belong to everyone. But if you really want to clean up your corner, you need to get several of them to work together. Expect your annoying neighbourhood busybody to complain about monopolizing them and trying to downvote you on the local rep net.
* Cosmic ray damaged mesh nodes: It is easy to make replacement processors. It is hard to stick them where they are needed, since that is usually behind massive shielding or inside chunks of insulation. So people just stick replacements on top, leaving a "shadow" node of dubious function around.
* The monthly fire drill: Safety is important. This drill is no laughing matter - if you mess it up you show that you could get people kill. Expect rep gains and losses. The after-drill party is often good.
* The Ring. Tempers flare from time to time, and sometimes it is better to have hotspurs take it out on each other under controlled forms. This is a place fenced off with microgravity nets where the combatants can settle their scores... usually without killing each other's morphs (those are expensive). Also useful for cluster-cat baiting and other violent entertainments. It smells of sweat, blood, testosterone and spray-on medicines. Expect the local bookmaker to hang around.
* The still: of course the food fabber can make wine or liquor if you want (unless the parental lock has gotten stuck, perhaps on Captain's order). But nothing can stop the human urge for getting ethanol from fermentation. Even in microgravity a properly fabricated nano-osmotic membrane can get the elixir of life out of the fermented hydroponics you hid behind the radiator panel. Taste? Just download this patch, and it will taste great!
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