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Do you know what makes little sense?

Hyperspace.

Logically, you shouldn't be able to go faster than the speed of light.

Logically.

But apparently Han's universe doesn't run on Earth logic, so the Russian astronaut is sitting at a table, breakfast only half eaten, as she does sums.

Occasionally, she pauses to glare at the Observation Window, as if the destruction has the answers about multiple dimensions.

[tiny!tag: the russian astronaut]

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"Good day, Esfir." Charlie has been admiring the chaos and beauty of the end of the universe. It's much easier to absorb when it's happening at its own pace.

Her eyes flick up.

"Morning, Charlie."

(she may have some ink on her cheek, from rubbing her hand)

"How are you?" He walks closer and notices that bit of ink and points at her face. "You seem to have something there?"

"Hmm?" She reaches up, and then smiles. "Oops. It's just ink."

"Ah. You should consider using paper," he says with a smile of his own. And takes a seat.

"You cannot find results without creating mess," she says serenely.

"Results...that sounds like you are working on something scientific. I used to watch my friend Tot do that, but he never got ink on his face." Tot simply forgot to get haircuts and to eat.

"Physics. And my pen is leaking a little, so it is on my hands, and then it gets ever where."

"You should get a new pen," he suggests, but not seriously. "I never studied much physics, but I was good with math, if you need a hand."

"The maths...hmm. There is a world, the world I told you about, with the starfighters?

They can go faster than light."

"Well, given how many aliens have visited my reality, that would have to be possible." He hadn't thought about that question in years. "Einstein was apparently wrong."

"Or it is something else."

"You mean a way around the rules he wrote? That's what you're trying to calculate?"

"Roughly. If light is still the absolute, maybe...maybe it is...different dimensions. More than our...four."

"As I said, I wasn't a student of physics. But I seem to recall reading once that some cosmologists speculated there are more dimensions to reality than we can see. And if you are dealing with a very advanced technology, one far beyond that of your time, maybe they can play with those dimensions?" Or so he would guess.

"It's the only way it makes sense to me."

"It's possible it might not ever truly make sense, though. I've seen a lot of things that don't, and while I try to understand them, I'm not bothered in that sometimes I get nowhere with such questions." Not that he's not going to try to make sense of the Bar.

"I have to fly at faster than light speed," she points out.

"Have the other pilots tried to explain it? How do they do it?"

"I asked Han, but I was a leeeeeeeeeeedle distracted by the stars at that point."

"What's it like? Or is this something I would need to see?" He's never thought about space travel. It was always too distant. But at the same time, it's something he would like to know more about.

"In hyperspace, the stars are...not pins of light anymore, but stripes. Swirling, dancing sripes of light against the dark."

"That sounds very...pretty? Heartstopping? Unexpected?" One of those must fit.

"Beautiful," the Russian astronaut says softly, eyes distant.

"Then you are quite lucky, to be able to find beauty in the stars. To get to go further and faster than your comrades could. And as for the math...it will come in time.

"Did you get to pilot the ship?"

She laughs.

"Oh, no. It is Han's baby. And I wouldn't know how to fly it. It takes...practice, even for a pilot with years experience, to learn another craft."

"So what role will you playing, especially given that we apparently can't leave here for more than a few days." Or so he's been told.

"Oh, I'll be fighting. One battle."

"So this will be like the old days for you, if I remember my history correctly?" Weren't all the early astronauts trained as fighter pilots? Even if they were women and wouldn't have actually seen combat?

"Exactly."

She has seen combat, but then her world is a little different from most.

"I'm glad you found that. So far I haven't found anything like that." Though he is wondering about that Gordon fellow he met and the aliens Gordon will be fighting.

"An oppertunity, or a fight?"

"I suppose the former. But I know a little about the latter. Sometimes a fight isn't a bad thing.

"What is the fight about?"

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