A man walked through a silent hall, richly designed with marble flooring and columns lining the red carpet that softened his footsteps. Decorated with Neoclassical paintings, the hallway led through a perfectly curved arched doorway, which opened into a vaulting gallery chamber. The circular gallery walls were hung with Rococo originals, and statues were situated around the room with as much attention to artful detail as to the sculpting itself. It was the ceiling however, that the man's eyes were drawn upward to -- of course, he already knew what was there. There, on a vaulted roof to rival any cathedral's, was a grand fresco, finished just yesterday by the same artisans which had been hired to create their masterpieces on the ceiling of every room. Of course, the galleries, all fourteen of them, were given special attention above all the others.
He walked out of the room, feeling at peace now that the last sanctuary of artwork on his ship had been completed and verified as such. Down the maze of hallways, up and down stairs and one automated lift, he made his way to the centre circle, the inner sanctum where he commanded this, the greatest addition yet to his collection. Most people had whispered about an airship. The more imaginative called it a flying castle, and the one cynical reporter who had made an article about it referred to it as an abomination of an aircraft. The man, who was settling now into the padded chair in the exact middle of the living machine, had only called it by its loving name: Hikoukyu.
Without prompting, Hikoukyu's computer system came alive. A checkerboard screen appeared in front of him, a hologram, or a holograph; he never knew the difference. His forte was in art, appraisal, collections... not wiring and circuit boards, although at least both the scientists and he could share an appreciation for lots of zeroes.
The screen prompted him for his name. For a second he paused, then tapped the letters on the floating, transparent screen. To his surprise, it was indeed touch-sensitive, and his name quickly filled the underlined space. JIRARUDAN. A second later the checkerboard pattern reappeared, with encoded messages in barely readable-sized lettering on seemingly random squares, and here and there a square was neither transparent or solid white like the others, but a dimly glowing green.
Swivelling in the chair, he brought to life the outer parts of Hikoukyu that had not automatically turned on like the central rooms had. The outermost rings of room and passageways were not connected to the same activation sensors. Safety precaution, said the lead technician, which Jirarudan didn't know enough to say whether it was reasonably precautious or not. His ears were filled with a soft, soothing hum, almost like breathing. Hikoukyu was his partner, his only companion, his life. A bride of machines and hidden machinations. His personal world, and he was master of it all.
Propellers began to turn at a command from a switch, and the checkerboard screen now had a translucent map displayed above it. The gleaming metal that half-surrounded him was all but silent as the dancing fan blades went faster and faster. The halogen light above was bright, but it was nothing compared to the shafts of sunlight that filled the open archways around the perimeter of this central room. At the slightest movement on the armrest, his chair separated itself from the console and hissed smoothly over to the largest archway directly in front of the middle terminal, and he saw that already the world had fallen away to make room for his own sanctuary. Jirarudan smiled, at last among the heights of the legends.