The three rules of confinement

Saturation depth is not dangerous to you in the way the surface imagines. It is dangerous, slowly, to your patience with other people. The three rules below are not in any official handbook. Long-rotation crews adopt them within the first week of every contract.

One: the door is closed

If a colleague's compartment door is closed, you do not knock except to deliver a meal or a pressure alert. Saturation modules are small enough that the door is the only privacy available, and the privacy works only if it is honoured. There is no other rule about solitude, because there does not need to be one.

Two: the meal is shared

Whatever you brought from the surface that is yours alone — a particular tea, a sweet, a specific tin — you eat in your compartment. Whatever is in the galley is shared. This is not enforced. It would not need to be enforced. A long rotation finds the people who try to bend it within forty-eight hours.

Three: the surface is not invoked

You may speak about your home, your weather, your sky, your last leave. You may not invoke them in argument. The phrase when I get back to the surface I will… is not, technically, banned. It is, however, considered to be the speech of someone whose rotation is going to feel longer than it has to.

Why this is in the safety section

Because what kills people at saturation depth is not the pressure. It is the slow accumulation of small intolerances in a sealed module. The Conservancy's medical lead has, on several occasions, recommended evacuation for psychological reasons. The recommendation is taken seriously. It is also rare, because the rules above tend to suffice.