008; Voice

[andblockbuster]

 [Welcome back to another exciting adventure in the world of Topher Brink. There's a methodical clanking of tools and, once again, it seems Topher has turned his communicator on with the purpose of saying something, and then gotten distracted. Luckily, you're not stuck with ten minutes of dead silence with the actual sounds of someone working. In fact, it's only a few seconds before he starts talking.]

Sometimes I really think I'm the only one who doesn't spend an hour of every... relative day, I guess, thinking how bad I wanna go home. Don't get me wrong. I didn't get possessed by demons or nearly assimilated into a hive mind or chewed on by hellbeasts back home, and all of those things suck, but... It's not that bad. Everyone dies eventually, right? Why not die in space. ...Okay, so it's a touch cynical and I know- I'm terrifying the children. Cover their ears, ban that last bit from future broadcasts, whatever... The point is...

[There's a pause, followed by a pained noise, because genius here probably pinched his fingers or something.] The point is, uh... [Oh, did he have a point? He totally had one.]

... I don't remember what the point is, but I'll tell you something else. Hayley's post got me thinking about the whole... lack of dates thing. And I know it doesn't mean much to most of you, but it was, like... Late May or something when I showed up here and I've been here for eight months now, which means if time in space weren't so kerflooey, it'd be late January. So that means I'm 28 years old now, which... Yeah, that means exactly what I'm implying.

And this is not some big extravagant plea for gifts or attention or anything. I was just thinking about how this time last year, my birthday went by unnoticed and most of the time... Yeah, let's just say I've never had many people to celebrate it with. But here... If I said I wanted to gather some of my buddies up and sit in a common room and... I dunno, raid the library for something watchable and eat cake... It could happen. Not that I'm suggesting that either, because I have my doubts about whether the library has the best kind of bad science fiction when we're living the best kind of bad science fiction, but I could do it. And that means a lot to me.

Ah, I found my way back to the point. With all the bad stuff that happens here and the imminent badness continuing to loom over us and the fact that we miss the people we left behind back home... We can't forget that for some of us... This stupid ship has actually given us something. Fresh starts, the families we never knew we needed, friends, whatever. And that's a good thing.

[There's a thoughtful sigh.] I dunno. It does kinda make a guy wonder what happens if we do all go home. Sure, we lose all the bad things, but what about the stuff we actually wanna remember?

Comments

[testgasm]

I would have liked to see the outside, I think. I mean, I could make educated guesses, there were some parts of the facility near the surface where the ceilings were--were less than functional, that's probably how the birds got in.

[andblockbuster]

It's very bright. And loud, but only if you were underneath a bustling metropolis or something. Cities, in general, are not tiny robot friendly.

[testgasm]

I don't really know what we were under. What is there to be under in Michigan?

[andblockbuster]

[HE HAS TO THINK ABOUT IT...]

Detroit? Not exactly the science capitol of the world, but no one would think to look for a giant secret underground lab under Detroit.

[testgasm]

Oh, no, we weren't secret. We won all sorts of awards, you know, back when the humans were still alive.

[The US Senate loved us]

[andblockbuster]

Well, you guys weren't hiding a Build Your Own Person workshop in your basement. Not that we didn't get a lot of attention for the stuff we could actually admit on record that we were doing, but it was... sorta biased, in retrospect.

[We owned the US Senate.]

... And people wonder why I have so much trouble talking about what I do for a living.

[testgasm]

Apparently we were, though, in a--in a backwards sort of way.

[We lost some astronauts]

I mean, I guess I could see why you would. But we're okay, as long as nobody really knows about it.

[andblockbuster]

Build-Your-Own-Robots-With-Human-Brains-That-Go-Crazy-And-Kill-Everyone. Doesn't have the same ring to it.

[...You might win that one.]

So far so good. And the whole science department seems to be jumping ship to those creepy labs that you couldn't pay me to set foot in again. We could end up with the whole less-sketchy department to ourselves.

[HE IS VERY EXCITED ABOUT THIS.]

[testgasm]

No, you're right, it doesn't. Good thought, though.

I love having that lab to ourselves. So much more preferable to everyone mucking about in there all the time. Less chance of anyone asking questions about the chair.

[andblockbuster]

And if they do ask questions about the chair, which they... probably won't, because they've got other things to worry about, we'll just... tell them we're making a massage chair. Or a virtual reality simulator. It's not like anyone actually knows what an imprint chair looks like.

[Except Claire...]