“Rugs,” Marilyn said immediately. “We need more rugs.”
“Rugs is a good start,” Angel agreed cautiously. She had a vague idea of what might be coming.
“Our walls and floors on the MMM are all neutral, foam or metal colored,” Marilyn said. “We need warm colors. Bright colors. Nice and soft. And makes the place look homely, welcoming. Our walls could do with feeling soft and comfy too.”
“Uh, that’s Uzbeks,” Angel commented.
“And you? You want the walls to be bare like inside some Kazakh yurt?”
“Nope, my interest is, well, more brutalist. You know, I was mentally preparing to work on some oil rig in future. Utilitarianism is natural to me. The MMM is already a super-inviting workplace compared with the alternatives awaiting any chemical engineer.”
Stacy was listening, and suddenly spoke up.
“Well, I don’t mind if our Dom looks like a Dorm.”
“Huh?” Naz looked confused.
Riley knew English and figured it out first. “Stacy is just playing with words. As you know, Dom is Russian for house or home. Dorm is English for dormitory, which is a place you live in for work or school, but not your true home.”
“H’m!” Naz huffed. She was regretting a bit that she never learned English when she had the chance.
Meanwhile Angel and Marilyn were discussing whether they should get made to order rugs from Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan.
“You know, we should get rugs and put them everywhere,” Marilyn grinned eagerly. “Decorate the walls with rugs. All the floors. Rugs on chairs and sofas. Rug tablecloths. Rug mousepads. Even on the garage floor, so it doesn’t look like a bare factory floor anymore.”
“I’m definitely not supporting rugs inside the car,” Naz spoke up suddenly. “I like the Rolls Royce’s high quality floor carpets as they are.”
“And I oppose using communal funds to buy so many rugs,” Stacy spoke out. “We haven’t even started seriously earning money; I haven’t a clue how long our bank accounts will last.”
“And I’m not supporting this Uzbek- or Turkic – desire to cover every possible surface of our living space with a rug,” Riley spoke out.
“Not every surface needs to be covered. Just the horizontal ones,” Marilyn offered. “And a select few vertical surfaces, of course. Preferably lots of select few vertical surfaces.”
“Can you imagine how much dust would accumulate?” Riley objected.
“Bare walls are not homely,” Marilyn said. “Soft walls are homely.”
“We’ve got to put a stop to this,” Angel piped up. “Uzbeks also cover tables used for food preparation with rugs. I’m not cutting meat on a rug!”
“Table tops need to look like table tops – with visible wood surfaces,” Riley said. “Otherwise I can’t even tell the table from the floor.”
“Then that’s good; we can sit and eat on the floor too,” Marilyn said happily. And looked at Angel to see if Angel would support her.
“Oh no, floors must be bare so we can keep them clean!” Riley insisted. “If you want warm and homely, we should go for parquet flooring.”
“Lithuanians are like Scandinavians – they use wood for everything, don’t they? All bare softwoods on every possible surface like Ikea furniture, monotonal colors, no flower prints?” Naz didn’t look as though she liked that idea either. It was too Baltic, too cold and unfriendly from her point of view.
“It isn’t that bad. It’s economical and lasting,” Riley said. “Functional,” she added after half a second.
“That sounds like Scandinavian stinginess,” Naz said. “The Nordics are some of the richest countries in the world, but almost every surface in a Nordic home is bare and cold and hard and unfriendly as heck!”
“I do support this kind of stinginess,” Stacy spoke out. “Was going to suggest something that we are all familiar with…”
“Oh no, don’t tell me you want Soviet type flooring!” Riley exclaimed.
“Linoleum is cheap, lasting and light,” Stacy said. “Surely it’s worth considering?”
“No Soviet type flooring!” Two or three ZIL members chorused.
Now Stacy had to defend herself.
“I know our dear MMM is quite bare at the moment. But it’s already very well equipped. Superbly practical. And linoleum comes in many patterns.”
“Doesn’t feel homely, that’s the problem,” Marilyn groused.
“Tak, I want to customize something,” Naz said.
“You do have an office already. Can’t you customize that?”
“Yes, but I also want something, well, in our common space to make it more like a living space. Too many bare, hard, cold surfaces.”
“We also need lots of color. I’m used to colorful stuff. It’s part of my home culture,” Marilyn said.
“A Scandinavian or minimalist aesthetic is good,” Riley insisted. “My brain didn’t develop in Uzbekistan. I can’t deal with psychedelic explosions of colors and patterns everywhere.”
“Color is good!” Marilyn insisted.
“My eyes need a rest! Subdued tones good!” Riley responded.
“I do agree with Marilyn here, warm colors make us feel warm, bright colors make us feel bright!” Naz said.
“How about we compromise, bright and warm colors with solids?” Angel asked.
“Aren’t traditional Kazakh textiles also characterized by vibrant colors, complicated patterns and designs?” Marilyn challenged Angel.
“Yes, and I don’t like that! Too distracting,” Angel said. “Brutalist Soviet simplicity for me!”
“How about solid yellow and orange carpets? Nice and bright!” Naz announced.
“Minimalism!” Riley rejoined. “No carpets!”
“Riley, if you like minimalist, how about Japanese?” Stacy offered.
“I don’t want to live inside an anime themed home,” Angel protested. “Next we will have bug-eyed cartoon characters with oversized heads and plastic figurines featuring mecha robots everywhere.”
“That’s otaku, not traditional Japanese,” Stacy pointed out. “Traditional stuff is very restrained.”
“I can support tatami mats instead of rugs,” Marilyn said. She clearly did not know how much tatami mats cost or weighted.
“Tatami mats are not that light,” Stacy warned. “At maybe 20kg and $200 USD a mat which is roughly two square meters each.”
“Cost aside, this will add too much to the weight,” Naz figured it out. “Just our second floor living space alone would add 7 tons.”
“Rugs will weight less,” Angel pointed out. “But they would still add a few tons to our airship.”
“How about just a few rugs in communal areas?” Marilyn asked. “At least in our media room, so it isn’t so bare when we’re meeting our Benefactors. Otherwise it feels like a punishment.”
“I wouldn’t want too many Central Asian rugs,” Naz said.
“Don’t Sakartvelians use rugs a lot too?”
“Design is more varied. We aren’t stuck with Islamic designs.”
“These aren’t Islamic! The Turkmens use tribal designs that predate…”
And so it went back and forth. Marilyn suggested that everyone could have the same sized share of the communal funds to decorate or personalize her own room, and what was left over would be the size of her vote or contribution for the public space.
“So you can use up all your budget on your own room. Or you can use it all up on decorating our shared space, with no money left for your room. Or anything in between. How about that?” Marilyn proposed.
Riley raised a white hand.
“Please note that we’re just starting out. We have just had one assignment, the Stealsky mission. That paid 200,000 rubles, which sounds great for a few days’ work. Until you realize that the MMM consumes over 5000 rubles worth of kerosine per hour when it is cruising at 50km per hour. So we didn’t actually make enough money to keep our home and office moving for even two days.”
The MMM actually consumed only a tiny amount of fuel when traveling at the 10km/h recommended by the Benefactors. This fuel efficiency is part of the magic of being an airship. But Riley didn’t want to stress on it. Because once you chose to speed up an airship for any directed travel, fuel cost climbed quickly. Air resistance increases proportional to the cube of speed. So Riley wanted to make the point that if her teammates ever wanted to go anywhere fast, they first had to be careful with company funds.
“Wait, we don’t spend any fuel if we are stationary, right? We do have solar panels?” Marilyn pointed out.
Naz gestured with her thumb. “How much fuel we actually use, is not consistent. If it is sunny and we are stationary during summer, we generate way more electricity than we need. This charges up our onboard batteries, and we can then travel a distance for free. If it is winter and cloudy, we need lots of fuel for both traveling and keeping ourselves warm on board.”
“Our fuel costs are expected to skyrocket in winter,” Riley said darkly.
“Uh, as said earlier, our windows are two times double glazed,” Marilyn said. “And the entrances are triple layered. We are well insulated…”
Stacy folded her arms. “Does everyone here understand what it means to be living in Russia – or the former USSR – and preparing for winter?”
Stacy was looking at Marilyn and moved her gaze to Naz. The two didn’t really seem to know. And spring was just beginning. Which means they might not know until seven months later.
“As former Sovyetsky narod, I know we have to stockpile whenever there is a supply of goods,” Naz said vaguely. “I do support this concept.”
Stacy decided to lay out her biggest concern up front.
“Summers are fine, autumns are iffy, but we have to really prepare for long, harsh, difficult winters. We’ll need very fat bank accounts by end of September to pay for heating fuel.”
Stacy was looking straight at Naz when she was speaking. And Naz realized suddenly how Siberian looking Stacy’s eyes were. Her family must have passed down some cultural wisdoms to her.
“By September, nights will be below freezing so we must keep some heating going. All fuel storage capacity on board must be filled by October. Never bet on resupply from November to March. Or else we have to migrate South and spend the winter in, um…”
“Uzbekistan,” Marilyn said in a neutral tone. She wasn’t against going home, but given that she had been sentenced to death, she was also not completely enthusiastic about spending too much time in Uzbekistan.
“Could try for Nakhchivan?” Angel asked. “I’ve never been there before, and people are reputedly friendly.”
“Try telling that to the ex-Armenian minority that used to live there,” Naz said without smiling.
“Oh, you’re taking sides now? Is it because Georgians sympathize with Armenians as fellow Christians?” Angel challenged.
“From the viewpoint of Tbilisi, right in the middle of the Caucasus, anybody who hurts another mountain people is flat out in the wrong.”
Sakartvelians took this perspective not because they were Christians, but because they strongly identified with all the other mountain people – except for the Azeris, who were not linked by myth to the other Kavkaz peoples. They certainly did not identify with the Chechens or the Circassians on religious grounds. It was because Georgian myth recognized Chechens and Circassians as brother nations born of the same ancestor.
And finally, Sakartvelo was the receipients of multiple waves of refugees whenever other fights took place in the Kavkaz region.
“The Armenians started…” Angel began.
“The conflict was in Nargono-Karabakh. The Armenians living in Nakhchivan didn’t do anything in Nakhchivan. They were being blamed for conflict elsewhere. And I totally despise all these meaningless ethnic conflicts where somebody blames someone else associated with the enemy…” Naz went.
“Enough!” Stacy intervened. “We are definitely not going to Nakhchivan for winter. It looks good from the air, but transportation by road over the mountains is difficult. They don’t have good fuel supplies, so we won’t be able to source enough kerosine for MMM.”
“Wait, this conversation has gotten sidetracked!” Riley waved two white hands. “We need to make more money first. That will give us more options for winter.”
“Riley, it’s April and you’re preparing for winter now?” Angel stirred.
“My family was in Siberia for many years,” Riley replied. “Most of the Lithuanians who died, did so on the way – or in the first two years.”
Riley lifted a hand and tugged on the claw hairclip gripping her blonde hair at the back.
“We learned the very, very hard way. In Siberia you use spring to prepare for winter.”
Stacy nodded. “This is how Siberian Rossiyanin survive. They are the ultimate deferrers of gratification.”
…
There was a pause as everyone mulled over the concept of deferred gratification. This was not the kind of language Stacy could use easily in an article meant for the mass media. But since the ZIL team was educated…
Angel lifted a hand. “Stacy, if you want to save money now for future use, I’m with you. I had been wondering how much it costs to keep such a big airship going anyway.”
Naz nodded. “I can live without fancy stuff. Let’s prioritize making it through our first winter together.”
“I agree with the concept of preparing for lean times,” Marilyn smiled brightly. “With or without decorations and personalizations, our MMM is still a far nicer place to live in than any barracks.”
“All right, simple vote,” Stacy said. “We vote to make more money by taking on more Missions. As part of this agreement, we should vote to save money first. So we’ll have to be very frugal with communal funds, and not go about spending money on decorations and personalizations.”
No one disagreed, so the vote passed 5-0.
As they were breaking up, Riley sidled up to Stacy with a strange look on her face. “Stacy, pardon me but why do you know such trivia as the cost and weight of a tatami mat? Surely you didn’t get that from anime too?”
Stacy turned to face her second in command. She figured that Riley was indeed a skeptical, questioning person by nature. Riley didn’t know Stacy well enough to just take whatever Stacy said at face value, so Riley was suspecting that Stacy had made up the figures.
“I didn’t get that from anime,” Stacy said with disarming frankness. “I got it by asking. The figures I gave are not even the mean quote without shipping. Actual quotes ran from 80-150% of what I said above.
And the weight is relevant, because I had to consider cost of freight – actually, it was because I had toyed with the idea of setting up a tatami mat business. Figured that there is a market among anime fans.”
“But you didn’t?”
“Costs after all shipping and warehousing, and not considering any bribes or import taxes I might have to pay, would have been maybe $240USD per mat of roughly 2 square meters in Moscow. And tatamis do have to be turned over or replaced after a number of years. Once confronted with reality, I wasn’t sure if there was a market anymore.”
“So is your Moscow apartment is lain with tatamis?”
“Nope. Too expensive,” Stacy said. “My apartment is lain with Soviet type flooring.”
Marilyn heard that. “Central Asian rugs?” She asked.
“I missed too many opportunities to take money in exchange for a good story. So my place only had linoleum over bare prefabricated concrete,” Stacy said with a smile.
“Oh yes, Soviet type flooring,” Riley repeated.