The Center Court

(This is part of the continuing series about the design of Skyler Base)

In Rome's Revolution, after Rei leaves the isolation chamber and walks down the south corridor, he and Rome enter the center courtyard. Because the starbase was originally built using a tentpole and mylar sheath, the whole thing is pyramidal and the top of the ceiling in the center is very high.

I believe the Vuduri removed the top section and put in some sort of translucent or transparent panels but I cannot be sure. Nor can I be sure why they did it in the first place. I can only tell you that my recollection of the place was that it had some windows. Perhaps since all Vuduri cities have "The Tower" this was an attempt to approximate some of its functionality.

What was the purpose of the center court? You will see the annular layout of Skyler Base makes it difficult to build useful extensions of the rings in this tight. And also the standard Vuduri design always has a focus of attention in the middle. As such, it was only natural at Skyler Base. The open section in the middle was fairly spacious. It had two main areas. The first was the food preparation area where they had a fairly elaborate bank of food synthesizers.

The other side of the courtyard was seating areas. The Vuduri are not very social creatures so most of the tables were designed for one person, two at the most. There were a few four-man and six-man tables but those would have been for meal-time meetings, not a bunch of friends.

Rei's first exposure to Vuduri food was at the synthesizer station. His introduction was less than auspicious. I will cover that in more detail tomorrow.