Rohan's real body was shaking violently, sweat pooling on his pod's floor. But his mind was a perfect, silent sphere. He wasn't fighting the motion. He was being the motion.
"We need you to remote-pilot the station's emergency thrusters," the Orbital Spin engineer explained, her face a flickering hologram. "But the telemetry delay is 0.4 seconds. Too slow for a human. Our AI can't handle the chaotic spin. You, however… you don't react to motion. You invent it. Your virtual gyroscope can create a stable frame of reference where none exists." virtual gyroscope
He activated his virtual gyroscope.
He saw the thruster controls. Not as buttons, but as points on a dance floor. He imagined his avatar, Phirki , running along the station's hull. He fired the port thrusters for 0.2 seconds. He fired the aft for 0.1. He spun the station not against its tumble, but with it, using its own momentum like a partner in a waltz. Rohan's real body was shaking violently, sweat pooling