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nellied-reviews · 4 years

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Super Energy Saver Mode Re-listen

Hellooooo! My Wolf 359 re-listen has hit episode 6, and guess what that means? Yup, you got it!

Super Energy Saver Mode

In which Eiffel struggles to name his top five lanthanides, Hilbert blows things up again, and the Hephaestus might be haunted?!

I'll confess, going into this episode I could not remember very much about it. The title felt familiar, I vaguely remembered that it was one of the episodes where something on the Hephaestus stops working, but other than that? Nothing. Zip. Zilch. So that was exciting.

And you know what? I can kind of see why I didn't retain much from this episode! Plot-wise Super Energy Saver Mode just doesn't do very much. There's not a complex solve or fix for the issues that come up, or a clever work-around. Instead, Minkowski and Eiffel just... figure everything out and fix it competently?

In retrospect, there is, of course, one big, plot-relevant, spoilery thing that happens. But even that is basically left unresolved by the episode’s ending, which aims to create a creepy atmosphere than anything else.

Because that is what this episode does well. Without the additional job of being plotty, Super Energy Saver Mode can just concentrate on being atmospheric. Coming into it pretty much blind, in particular, meant that I appreciated the tension baked into the episode - even once I remembered what was going on, I really enjoyed how spooky this episode felt.

As per usual, though, we don't start with the creepiness. Instead, we start with Eiffel chatting about something mundane - namely, the fact that it's the crew's 500th day in space!

It's something that I think, on any other show, wouldn't actually be all that mundane. There are a whole bunch of spacey series where I could imagine a pretty decent episode being built around the crew trying to host some sort of anniversary celebration. But here, 500 days isn't something to be celebrated. It's not a bad thing, per se. But it's not a good thing. It's just a thing, a reminder of how worn down the crew are at this point, and how many days they have left on the clock. We get the impression that this mission is more of a long, hard slog than anything else - and thus we're reminded again of how little Goddard cares about its employees' wellbeing and morale.

Eiffel and Hera are having an unofficial party, though, with just the two of them, which is sweet. In practice, of course, this just means that they're spending time chatting while Eiffel avoids work. But it's really cute, and I find the banter about top five lists and the various criteria that Hera uses to come up with them soooooo funny. I mean, Hera judges "Stick It to the Man" songs by active political regimes at the time of composition, and complexity of choral progression, which I love for reasons I can't quite pinpoint?

The sequence also shows how differently Hera and Eiffel think. Eiffel very immediately and intuitively forms an emotional connection to things like music, but can't even fathom how Hera just knows things like the 900th digit of pi, or all of the lanthanides. Hera, meanwhile, has so much more information and raw data at her metaphorical fingertips than Eiffel, but doesn't quite connect to it in the same way, and doesn’t entirely get how Eiffel does. It's not (like with the Dear Listeners) that she can't connect to music, or fundamentally doesn't get it. But she's working on a different scale, judging by different standards. And she's not embarrassed to mess with Eiffel because of it, or to talk about it with him. Really, it's a textbook example of how to hang out and be friends with somebody while still thinking and relating to the world differently - which I think is a large part of what I like about Eiffel and Hera's friendship.

Their fun little interaction gets interrupted, sadly, by Hilbert requesting extra power for his lab, which we can already tell will end badly, because come on, it's Hilbert. But what is interesting is how irritated Hera seems afterwards. I mean, she does the whole "I am not programmed to get upset" spiel, but nobody's buying it, and when she confesses that she doesn't like Hilbert's tone, there's definitely a lot of annoyance there. It reminds us, after seeing Hera's machine side, that she's still a person and still has emotions - a balance that Wolf 359 is generally pretty good at. Hera's allowed to be an AI, with the non-human worldview that that entails. But at the end of the day, she's still a character with emotional depth and nuance.

With that in mind, then, Hera admits that she doesn't like Hilbert's tone - which is totally understandable - but also that she's mostly worried that somebody's going to get hurt as a consequence of Hilbert's recklessness - which seems to be validated when the station's power cuts out and Hera goes offline mid-sentence.

Eiffel, given the circumstances, remains remarkably calm, but this does mark the point where the episode shifts genre to become what is, in effect, a haunted house story. It's set on a space ship, sure, but all of the beats from this point onwards are pretty much the beats you might expect if Eiffel were, say, spending the night alone in his late grandfather's crumbling old mansion, long rumoured to be cursed. It's paranormal horror at its finest, complete with weird voices and jump scares and a bunch of "it's probably nothing" moments.

I noticed, as well, that there was barely any music from this point onwards. There is some (shout out to the creepy little theme with the ghost-like, theremin-sounding wail and the soft bass guitar!) but it's subtle, and very much secondary to the sound effects, which suddenly get very loud. For as long as the power is off, we get all sorts of creaking, groaning and echoing - and with it a sense of just how big and empty the Hephaestus really is. Hera's constant presence and the electronic noises around the place do a lot to mask that, normally. But now we're hearing the silence, and it is eerie.

Adorably, Eiffel's first instinct is to ask himself, "What would Commander Minkowski say if she were here right now?" This leads into a huge and surprisingly detailed fake argument, of course, which is hilarious in and of itself, but there's also just something kinda sweet about how immediately Eiffel assumes that Minkowski would have a handle on things. Eiffel still complains about her a lot, at this point in the series, so the respect that this little moment betrays feels fresh and sort of unexpected.

Eiffel's not wrong to trust Minkowski, either. Once she shows up, the episode's main problem - Hera being offline - gets solved quickly and remarkably efficiently, with Eiffel doing the legwork and Minkowski giving instructions, and honestly, it's in moments like this that I remember how technically competent Minkowski is. I think I tend to remember the more military, combative bits best, with her stalking round harpoon in hand or shooting folks, so it's nice to be reminded that the Commander can also handle things like repairs just fine.

Of course, that means that the episode's main tension is never actually about the power outage. The sudden silence and the threat of life support running out add to the episode's general atmosphere, sure. But the thing we are most anxious about, as the episode plays out, isn't the ship's newly-accessed Super Energy Saver Mode. No, instead of that, we're given a new mystery, and it's a doozy: what's up with that voice Eiffel keeps hearing?

It starts almost inaudible, but in the end Eiffel hears the words loud, clear and terrifying: "You're not the first." Which, like, terrifying much? It's vague and ominous and very chilling, especially with all the distortion that's going on.

In retrospect, of course, we know that this is our first encounter with Captain Isabelle Lovelace - indeed, it's one of the very few encounters that we have with the real, non-alien-duplicate Isabelle Lovelace, for whatever that's worth. We also know that she doesn't mean any harm - she's trying to warn the crew, in fact.

Strangely, though, knowing that doesn't actually this any less effective as a ghost story. After all, what are we hearing, but the voice of a dead woman, warning the crew about an even worse monster lurking in their midst? The Hephaestus, Lovelace's recording reminds us, is indeed haunted, if not literally then at least metaphorically, by the ghosts of its former crew and the traces that they have managed to leave behind.

With or without hindsight, then, the episode is creepy, hinging ultimately on the idea that there might be something not quite airtight in Hera's programming, that there could be something hiding - or deliberately hidden - just underneath her code. In making that the focus of the story, the episode opens up the tantalising possibility that something might fundamentally be wrong with the Hephaestus and its systems. The show's very setting is destabilised and made frightening - and that's a genie that you can't just put back in the bottle once you decide that you're done telling ghost stories. Instead, the feeling that something is not quite right persists even after Hera comes back online, and still haunts the episode as it draws to a close, since we don't actually get an explanation of who Lovelace is. Instead, it remains a mystery. A spooky, weird, always-in-the-back-of-your-mind mystery.

It's a bold move, and it feels a lot like what happened with the plant monster, which is also at large at this point. I'm beginning to suspect that this is a thing we're going to see more of, too - big, obvious plot threads that are ostentatiously waved in front of us, then dropped, apparently without comment.

It's something I think these early episodes could do more easily, since the expectation that loose ends would be followed up on wasn't quite established yet. Later on in the series, everything gets more serialized, so if something like, say, an alien duplicate of Jacobi turns up and is left dangling, we can reasonably expect that it'll get addressed at a point. Earlier on? We've not got those expectations. This might just be the sort of show where weird, scary voices are brought up and then never mentioned again. It might be the sort of show that lets a plant monster loose and forgets about it for the rest of the series.

When it turns out, then, that that isn't the case, even in these early, apparently inconsequential episodes, it feels like a bonus, and we get, in hindsight, a little thrill of recognition, as we realise that no, there was a plot there the whole time. It's a satisfying feeling, at least for me, and it's 100% what's fuelling this re-listen.

So yup. Super Energy Saver Mode. An exercise in atmospheric spookiness, an enjoyable haunted house story and just generally a pleasant surprise. Solid work, really.

Miscellaneous thoughts

Eiffel is talking about an 830 day mission, if I've done my maths right - with the possibility of Command extending it! That is one long-ass time to spend in space with three other people!

I want to know Eiffel's top five Stick It to the Man songs so badly

"Ooookay. Maybe this isn't one of those wait and see things. Maybe it's one of those... imminent death things."

Wait Hilbert had to amputate multiple of Minkowski's toes???

Bless her, Hera sounds drunk when she's coming back online ^-^

#wolf 359 #wolf359 #w359 #wolf 359 relisten #super energy saver mode #nellied reviews #creepy episode this time #featuring a very familiar voice #distorted beyond all recognition #also Eiffel and Hera being cute

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stilitana · 4 years

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so i listened to this embarassingly quickly but let’s chalk that up to the self-isolation/working from home and leave it at that

wolf 359 reactions under the cut (spoilers):

firstly, that soundtrack was so good and i’ll be listening to those piano pieces forever

this show demonstrated the eternal power of the agatha christie principle: gather a ragtag cast of characters who’ve all got beef with each other, and trap them in a small space together. cue the instant tension and inevitable weighty revelations.

i adore that amid all the drama/action, there were so many moments when the writers let the narrative breathe a little and just allowed the characters to talk to each other, and play games with one another. the word games were delicious. these were often moments of levity and good character building, but they also all moved relationships forward or revealed something new, so don’t ever let anybody say that having chill little funny moments is useless narrative fluff. these were the best moments.

empty man cometh might be my favorite. am i alone now? and memoria were also just...so good. a lot of the mini-episodes were excellent as well, especially all the character ones. variations on a theme might be my favorite of the shorts.

normally i’m impatient and skip anything i perceive as extraneous to the central narrative, and come back to it later--im so glad i didn’t, the live episode was hilarious. ashamed that i even tried to skip change of mind because i was so impatient to see what was happening, but i felt too bad so not even five minutes into the next ep, i went back and listened to it, and that was the right move...it was so good.

every single character was fantastic. every single one. they were all complex--even the less central characters had at least a moment or two where they struck a different note, showed another side of themselves. kepler was the stand out on this front for me. i didn’t care at all about the si-5 crew when they first came in--i was actually annoyed and expected to hate them all, which is a risk you run when you introduce a bunch of new, influential characters so late in a story. they made it work so well. first i came around to maxwell, then jacobi, and finally (tbh it was his swan song) i was like, okay, kepler was a great character. they made him sympathetic without trying to retcon anything to force me to pity him or think he’d been good all along or anything. cutter and pryce were less human, so their redeeming qualities came more from being interesting. i think the voice acting plays a lot into this--cutter just on paper wouldn’t be half as fun

really impressed with how this same thing played out with lovelace--she went from this sort of mythic, predeceased character, to an antagonist, and finally to being such a central character to the crew that you could hardly imagine them without her. poor writing could have easily made her kind of character unlikable. i think characters like her often get short-changed and written as one-note action hero types who crash in and upend the narrative just to give the plot steam and provide friction. instead, she’s as fully fleshed out as the main characters, and seamlessly becomes one of them.

rip plant monster...i loved you :,(

so, the antagonists were multifaceted, and so were the protags. this could have also easily been sloppy. with eiffel especially, lazy writing would have made the reveal of his backstory super cheap, out of left field, and made you feel like you never knew him at all and leave you unable to reconnect. instead of going the route where the writer for some reason thinks they have to make their plucky protag gritty, the reveal of eiffel’s backstory doesn’t change him at all--and why should it? it’s his backstory--it already happened. instead, it only forces him and minkowski to have conversations they probably needed to have anyway, and fleshes out the reason he’s even there in the first place. on this note, it’s not ultimately his backstory that eiffel has to confront within the story as a major flaw--the backstory was a mistake in the past he’s been dealing with for years by the time we meet him. i love what they chose to do instead so much more: what he had to deal with was his current, present day behavior--how he effortlessly disrespects and belittles the people closest to him without even trying. the key there is, without trying--he has to make a decision to start. (”that’s the thing about you, eiffel--you try. you try really, really hard, and then--you stop trying” that was such a good interaction...god.) i could go on and on about how this was such a satisfying tack to take but i’m trying to cut it down. glib bastards like eiffel are so often a sort of male wish-fulfillment character where they get to say whatever the fuck they want without consequence, be lazy, be careless, and still come out on top, and still seem lovable, because hey, he’s funny. eiffel doesn’t get off that easily, and he’s a much better character for it, and so are all the others, for actually demanding better for themselves, because they know they deserve it, and because they all actually care about each other, so when they confront him, he doesn’t just shrug it off--he tries. (it takes him a minute. but he tries.)

hera broke my heart a million times i love her so much. she had so many complex inner conflicts that weren’t just boiled down to some dumbass bs like “boo hoo am i human.” her personhood is a given for the sorts of conflicts she has, as far as feeling inadequate, feeling unappreciated, like an imposter or a less-valued member of the crew. her and minkowski arguing was excellent and allowed them both a chance to be childish because hey, eiffel shouldn’t have the monopoly on that.

death was a serious thing. human life was highly valued, and its loss was never made light of. not even for antagonists (kepler, hilbert) or, in the most extreme case, pryce, who eiffel chose to make a sacrifice to defeat rather than just kill her, the one principle aside from doing as little work as possible he stood his ground on the entire story. team what’s wrong with handcuffs indeed...i just really loved that the main lead was a pacifist and that this line of thinking held sway in the narrative. it was really refreshing (i don’t think it should be--there’s just a lot of bad writing out there especially when things edge into the action genre) to see this stance on nonviolent conflict resolution wherever possible, because yeah, most people have a really hard time ending another person’s life...no shit. minkowski makes that call and deals with the fallout for the rest of the show--she’s not done dealing with it by the end, it’s going to be something she takes with her. sometimes eiffel’s passivity was depicted as a weakness, but he ultimately did diffuse a lot of situations and gave other characters the space to consider their options. i do think that sometimes the narrative’s insistence on eiffel’s dual pacifism/incompetence shifted the burden of action onto minkowski and lovelace and i’m not sure how i feel about that. i think where i’d have to look is comparing how pryce and cutter are dealt with--yeah, im willing to buy that minkowski wasn’t willing to trade all of her memories so that she wouldn’t have to kill cutter. but was she the one who had to have a body count as a conscious narrative choice, or were we just determined to maintain eiffel’s status as the sort of goofy, “innocent” one? or was that something minkowski was determined to preserve--because that’d be really sad and complicated and say way more about her than it would about him.

dear listeners. i loved everything about the dear listeners. it was everything i ever wanted from aliens trope-wise.

didn’t really get the total significance of surrogates or decima virus. those were the only two things that felt sort of hasty because the stakes suddenly went from “the lives on this space station” to “life on earth as we know it.” but apocalypse averted so whatever, the aliens just want music

i am conflicted about the fucking. amnesia. memory was SO important throughout, and questions of identity and personhood, and this is the only reason that amnesia ending didn’t enrage me. if i think about it more i’m sure there will be a lot to unpack with what’s being implied here

this has gotten REALLY long so im going to stop now and finish mindlessly entering data into excel. in short: i loved it

#wolf 359

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geejaysmith · 5 years

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Kat and I have amazing conversations sometimes and I felt they had to be shared. Also, alienfuckers, dad jokes, Maxwell’s alternative lifestyle and other headcanons, and Ace Attorney: Doug Eiffel edition. Full transcript under the cut.

Gill [Yesterday at 6:05 PM]: On an Unrelated topic: after the finale the crew remembers "OH YEAH, EIFFEL ACTUALLY HAD A FACE-TO-FACE CONVERSATION WITH ALIENS" and now in addition to all the other reasons to want him to Remember they're really freakin' curious to know how that went

Kat [Yesterday at 6:11 PM]: Minkowski: so what did they look like Eiffel: me (They do seem to like his body, they had a few models to choose from when talking to Cutter.)

Gill [Yesterday at 6:13 PM]: Eiffel, probably: at least the aliens think I'm cool I know what was meant by that but your phrasing made me think "In a shocking turn of events, it is the aliens who are attracted to the human." The aliens... are alienfuckers

Kat [Yesterday at 6:17 PM]: I don't think that's their jam but that WOULD be just his luck

Gill [Yesterday at 6:18 PM]: It is unlikely, but also: it would be hilarious

Kat [Yesterday at 6:21 PM]: the aliens keep sending me mental sexts and i crave death

Gill [Yesterday at 6:22 PM]: And lo another shitpost transforms into a fanfic concept, like a humble irradiated lizard becoming Godzilla: "would you fuck your clone?"

Kat [Yesterday at 6:28 PM]: leave him alone has the man not suffered enough

Gill [Yesterday at 6:28 PM]: No

Kat [Yesterday at 6:29 PM]: sigh

Gill [Yesterday at 6:29 PM]: Dance for my amusement, Douglas And also because I earnestly suspect that in the case of Eiffel and an interested alien-consciousness-in-the-form-of-a-Xerox-copy-of-him the answer would end up being "yes"

Kat [Yesterday at 6:34 PM]: idk i feel like it'd be more like "Oh what you spend two fucking years trying to drag us into the star because you can't be assed to make an appearance but you'll teleport across the galaxy for a booty call? Fuck you and I mean that figuratively" later sluts

Gill [Yesterday at 6:36 PM]: Bob is a bad datemate Is this entire train of thought brought on by the fact I still think of the person who expressed they shipped Bob/Eiffel in the tags of the "Take your double to Disneyland" post? Perhaps

Kat [Yesterday at 6:39 PM]: i don't know that you can have this at the same time as 'what if the aliens' bodies are still the people suppressed' without it getting Fucked Up but that's your perogative I guess as long as I don't have to hear about it family can't walk w me tonight so i need to hit the treadmill for a bit. ttyl

Gill [Yesterday at 6:41 PM]: See u in a bit! But ah yes, I hadn't thought of that til you brought it up Points at one explanation of Dear Listener manifestations for some ideas, points at a different explanation for ideas that would become unintentionally Pretty Fucked Up under the first explanation Although there is comedy potential to be found in Eiffel and Eiffel-2 having the "are we down with this" conversation In the /Justin McElroy voice, "someone just discovered they have ~the world's worst fetish~" sense

Kat [Yesterday at 7:33 PM]: a different terrible concept: eiffel with his pop culture references restored will likely be called upon to testify at the united nations

Gill [Yesterday at 7:37 PM]: O h g o d Ace Attorney: Doug Eiffel edition

Kat [Yesterday at 7:46 PM]: i mean they're gonna have to tell the world SOMEHOW and i'd think the international court would want to know and he's the one with the subconscious recall implanted sidenote if the DL can do that mental transfer could they have just... asked them to reupload whatever their most recent scan of eiffel was there are so many ways around this that's why it failed to get much of an emotional rxn from me

Gill [Yesterday at 7:47 PM]: Minkowski and Lovelace trying to get him to practice his testimony bc if they hit enough subconscious recall triggers they can at LEAST get thru an explanation of the aliens without Eiffel going off into a tangent Once they're off the Dear Listeners' script though all bets are off

Kat [Yesterday at 7:48 PM]: here's a list of preplanned questions your honor we're not responsible if you ask anything else

Gill [Yesterday at 7:51 PM]: Eiffel, maybe: now Goddard didn't send up us there to bring home any xenomorphs but let me tell you, with the Decima project? They might as WELL have let a facehugger get up close and personal with me The translators rapidly swapping notes on late 70's sci-of cinema because a handful of them actually know what he's talking about

Kat [Yesterday at 7:54 PM]: Minkowski headdesking behind him Eiffel English isn't most of these people's first languages

Gill [Yesterday at 7:57 PM]: The news cameras are all dead-focused on Eiffel. He's hit his stride and is picking up steam. "And it was right around the time I was coughing up my liquefied respiratory system that I thought to myself, gee, I'd MUCH rather get a face of alien wing-wong than deal with this!" Minkowski is off to the side. She is visibly restraining herself. No poker face in the world can hide how hard she is longing for death. Whether it is hers or Eiffel's is a subject of contentious debate.

Kat [Yesterday at 7:58 PM]: someone at an elementary school: hey Garcia, is that your dad

Gill [Yesterday at 8:01 PM]: Anne, who was four the last time she saw her father in person, gets one look at the man weaving an intricate Star Wars metaphor out of crimes against humanity and recognizes him instantly, but signs back "I have never seen this guy before in my life."

Kat [Yesterday at 8:04 PM]: good call kiddo

============

Gill [Yesterday at 8:10 PM]: Honestly I love the concept that no matter how much Eiffel may drive them up the wall sometimes the rest of the crew would meet Anne and immediately be ready to kill a man for her sake

Kat [Yesterday at 8:15 PM]: as far as we know he's the only crewmember with kids women in the military... it wouldn't be easy even if you wanted one, which idk if any of them did

Gill [Yesterday at 8:15 PM]: Wait wait, brainwave: it is actually AMAZING that Minkowski had no idea Eiffel had a child because... does he seem like the kind of guy. Who would ever resist a Dad Joke.

Kat [Yesterday at 8:15 PM]: haha fair

Gill [Yesterday at 8:16 PM]: Eiffel: Actually, I have amazing self-restraint when I choose to exercise it. (Various noises of disbelief.) Eiffel: have you ever heard me tell a dad joke? No? I rest my case

Kat [Yesterday at 8:21 PM]: biggest plot hole of the series more like it was too painful a memory but still

Gill [Yesterday at 8:22 PM]: If he ever patches that connection it'll open the floodgates

Kat [Yesterday at 8:26 PM]: He'll become the Maes Hughes of the gang, except with fewer war crimes

Gill [Yesterday at 8:27 PM]: ...has anyone on this crew done war crimes? SI-5 excepted of course, they have obviously done war crimes

Kat [Yesterday at 8:32 PM]: yeah SI5 is war crime central I'm not sure about some of the other stuff executing a prisoner? idk about Minkowski

Gill [Yesterday at 8:32 PM]: Also my thought

Kat [Yesterday at 8:32 PM]: she wasn't a formal pow though it was an ongoing engagement I don't know the rules

Gill [Yesterday at 8:32 PM]: Minkowski Has Done One (1) War Crime (Goddard Futuristics attempts to bring that against her in the court case only for Maxwell to stroll in like lol what's up gang)

Kat [Yesterday at 8:37 PM]: does Goddard in its current incarnation last long enough to sue anyone i mean i think you could sue them for attempted genocide

Gill [Yesterday at 8:38 PM]: Look I have had one semester of business law You were the one who almost went to law school Also re: other characters being parents, the only one I could see going kiiiinda either way on the subject is Lovelace and it wouldn't have been terribly high on her priority list prior to the Hephaestus mission I can see characters having the opinion that they could see Minkowski as a mom but she and her husband both strike me as understanding themselves and one another as being more career-oriented

Kat [Yesterday at 8:44 PM]: yeah if she wanted to rise in the ranks of the military... that would probably be a strike against her

Gill [Yesterday at 8:44 PM] And the implication she's got a Complex about her parents having both left promising careers to raise her Also, Lovelace: Well I always said I could see myself settling down someday, maybe have a family if I met the right person, but when I took the job with Goddard it was legally dubious whether I could actually do that- Eiffel: Because you're an alien? Eiffel: Eiffel: ...wait a sec

Kat [Yesterday at 8:54 PM]: ha It's ok to be gay in space

Gill [Yesterday at 8:56 PM]: Alternatively it's Hera who said that bc didn't connect those dots right away, meanwhile Eiffel saw Lovelace in a flannel shirt once and Knew Immediately Eiffel may be dumb but somehow his Bi-Fi has yet to fail him

Kat [Yesterday at 8:59 PM]: Hera doesn't grasp human sexuality nuances

Gill [Yesterday at 9:01 PM]: Funny addition to above thought: Eiffel put together that Jacobi was gay after like three days on the Urania, was the only one on the Hephaestus crew to do so, and just never felt it was relevant to bring up Hera, my child... you have much to learn (Also, Hera, probably: I'm experimenting at the moment, I'm looking for a torrent so I can download lesbianism)

Kat [Yesterday at 9:04 PM]: I don't know which option is funnier, that Jacobi is just Really Fucking Obvious but Eiffel was the only one paying attention or that it was super subtle and everyone's like How Did You Do That lovelace's righteous fury overwhelmed her gaydar, she was too mad to go 'same hat'

Gill [Yesterday at 9:07 PM]: Eiffel: I have something to confess to all of you... Jacobi: Eiffel literally not a single person on this ship is straight Eiffel: Oh I was just going to recount a PG version of my wild younger days, let's just say I know a thing or two because I've seen a thing or two.

Kat [Yesterday at 9:07 PM]: Jacobi on Earth: Just matched with myself on Grinder a-fucking-GAIN

Gill [Yesterday at 9:10 PM]: Jacobi: Oh I definitely picked up on it but who wants to go playing into stereotypes by speculating on what may or may not be a promiscuous history? Eiffel: Promiscuous? Look I've got notches in my belt but mostly I just ended up laying in somebody's bathtub at a house party while just conscious enough to nod along to someone else's relationship drama. Eiffel: to several sororities, I was the Gay Bathtub Wizard.

Kat [Yesterday at 9:11 PM]: Maxwell on day one of orientation: So if SI5 is paramilitary what's their stance on alternative lifestyles? Jacobi: I was recruited in a gay bar.

Gill [Yesterday at 9:12 PM]: Her asking the question has my brain going in several different directions

Kat [Yesterday at 9:13 PM]: I think she was recruited right after dadt was repealed... if obama exists in this universe fantasy obama

Gill [Yesterday at 9:15 PM]: One part of my brain: Maxwell is also gay Another part of my brain: Maxwell is exclusively attracted to nonhuman persons Yet another part of my brain, most adjacent to number #2: Maxwell voice, who in their right mind would build a robot that can't fuck? The 4th part of my brain: Maxwell wants to know how chill they'll be with her living exclusively off energy drinks and frozen yogurt for weeks at a time

Kat [Yesterday at 9:15 PM]: honestly I figured whatever it was it was MUCH weirder than just being gay

Gill [Yesterday at 9:15 PM]: Maxwell: I have plans to take over the world with my army of battle bots and rule as their robot queen.

Kat [Yesterday at 9:16 PM]: Maxwell: wait if you were recruited in a gay bar does that mean our boss frequents those or did he just go there to get you Jacobi: Believe me the question haunts me also Jacobi: sounds great i'm in

Gill [Yesterday at 9:16 PM]: Or, Maxwell: I am not joking for an instant when I say that I for one welcome our alien overlords "When I was 13 I tried to get myself abducted by aliens" except it's not a joke it's an actual minor headcanon of mine Also I almost typed "adopted" rather than "abducted" which shows you why Alana would probably want to do that

Kat [Yesterday at 9:19 PM]: she did say she's on bad terms with her family

Gill [Yesterday at 9:20 PM]: She grew up a pastor's kid in a tiny rural town in Montana, hearing that they don't get along is the furthest thing from a surprise to me. The surprise is that Maxwell has a restraining order against them

Kat [Yesterday at 9:21 PM]: tht implies the court found reasonable cause to issue one wack anyway i had a long day, i'm gonna call it a night

Gill [Yesterday at 9:21 PM]: o/ But yeah that Maxwell empathizes with nonhumans, apparently more than with most regular humans, that makes perfect sense to me I can see her frustration with the AI Ethics board in her last job Expressing Their Concerns and her suppressing flashbacks to many a Creationist rant, and trying to keep her eye from twitching visibly, and no I am not projecting I am just coloring in blank spaces in the narrative with my relevant life experience

#wolf 359 #conversations with kat #deliverusfromsburb

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briflatclarinet · 5 years

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25 Days of Wolfmas: Prompt Four/five

Hey! It’s nearly day six at this point, but here’s today and yesterday’s prompts. I wasn’t feeling it yesterday but I decided I should still answer the fourth question and incorporated here. I’m not super pleased with the end, but it was a part of my actual answer and that’s how I’d imagine Eiffel would react, so sorry if he’s a bit OOC cx

Anyway, I hope you enjoy! And thanks for reading ^-^

U.S.S. HEPHAESTUS STATION, WOLF 359 MISSION

PROJECT WOLFMAS: TRANSCRIPTION AND NOTES

Log Date: 1204021856-WDE

BEGIN TRANSMISSION

MINKOWSKI

Eiffel! You can’t hide forever! You have to get these recordings done!

(Note: Stomping feet can be heard. Minkowski lets out a frustrated groan.)

MINKOWSKI

Hera, can you tell me where Eiffel is? He told me he did his recordings for yesterday and today all in one go, but when I checked earlier I noticed he hadn’t done either of them.

HERA

Is that why Officer Eiffel has been hiding inside the Comms panel for the past hour?

MINKOWSKI

He’s been what?

EIFFEL

(Note: Officer Eiffel’s voice sounds quite muffled.) Hera!

MINKOWSKI

Eiffel! (Note: A panel opening can be heard, and then a thud) What are- when did- how did you even get in there?

EIFFEL

(Note: Officer Eiffel sounds slightly in pain and groans) It’s not as hard as you’d think, but it is a tight squeeze, Commander.

MINKOWSKI

And why are you hiding there?

EIFFEL

So I could avoid your inevitable rage when you figured out I wasn’t actually doing those stupid recordings?

MINKOWSKI

(Sighs) Eiffel. You’ve only done three of these things; how bad could they really be?

EIFFEL

I just don’t get why Command is having me do extra work on top of all the other stuff they already make me do, you know? What’s the point of me reading these when someone else already answered them?

MINKOWSKI

Like I said before, Eiffel, I don’t know why Command put you up to this, but it was a direct order. And you already missed one, so you’ll be reading that one and today’s.

EIFFEL

Seriously?

MINKOWSKI

Yes, seriously. I’m not letting you skip a question just because you missed a day.

EIFFEL

Come on, Minkowski! What’s skipping one little question going to do? I bet Command doesn’t even listen to these.

MINKOWSKI

They might not, but they specifically asked you to read twenty-five questions and I’m going to make sure those twenty-five questions get read.

(Silence)

(Groan) Eiffel, would it kill you to obey Command and complete an order once? Just read the stupid questions and be done with it. It’ll take what? Five minutes?

(Silence)

Fine! How about this? You can read the questions or you can help Doctor Hilbert with searching for that giant plant monster he let loose a few weeks ago. Your pick.

(Silence)

EIFFEL

(Groan) Fine! You don’t have to twist my arm so much, I’ll do it.

MINKOWSKI

Good, then hop to it. And I’ll be checking for those recordings as soon as you’re done, so no more funny business, alright?

EIFFEL

(Sigh) Yes, sir.

MINKOWSKI

And if you try anything like this again, I will personally sit in for each and every recording session to make sure you do them. Do I make myself clear?

EIFFEL

Yes, sir.

(Note: Footsteps can be heard exiting the Comms room.)

EIFFEL (CONT.)

Let’s get this over with. (Sigh) Hiya, folks. Doug Eiffel here to once again read weird questions and even weirder answers from some mysterious source sent to us by the lovely people over at Goddard Futuristics. And wouldn’t you know? Today’s a special episode because I have not one, not three, but two questions to read today. That’s right folks, two questions will be read for your listen pleasure. Isn’t that spectacular?

(Silence)

(Chuckle) Yeah, that’s what I thought. Anyway! Our first question iiiiiisssss: Who is your favorite character? Oh, this should be good. The answer should be obvious. (Chuckle) But Mystery Writer seems to have quite a bit to say, oddly enough. Guess they don’t like picking favorites. (Throat clears)

(Note: Officer Eiffel puts on a different tone that is over dramatic.) How dare you try to make me choose between such amazing characters? This is an outrage! Jk but seriously, I love almost every character in one way or another and even the ones I don’t love, I still respect them as a character. If I absolutely had to choose a favorite character, it’d be a toss up between Eiffel and Hera with Minkowski, Hilbert, and Lovelace tied for second.

EIFFEL

Seriously? Who could like Hilbert as a character? I mean, it’s good they picked the obviously correct choice for favorite, but those runner ups! And who the heck is Lovelace?

HERA

Officer Eiffel, you’re getting distracted again. You’ll never finish the assignment if you keep interrupting yourself.

EIFFEL

(Sighs) You’re right, Hera. I can contemplate the weirdness of it all later, let’s keep going.

Eiffel is the character who got me hooked on the series from episode one. I loved his shenanigans and it was nice to see how he developed throughout the story and his reasons behind being so goofy and sarcastic. Hera is a loveable bean who is just all around amazing and pretty relatable, despite being an A.I. I also love Michaela Swee’s monologues so much! Minkowski is just endearing in a way I can’t explain and I love how badass she can be when the going gets tough! Hilbert was an interesting character for me. At first, I loved how silly he seemed and the season 1 finale really surprised me! Then I loved how complex his character was and his motivations for being a scientist (along with his views on his work) really intrigued me. I didn’t initially like Lovelace, but as we got to know her past being desperate to leave and we learned about her previous crew, she really grew on me. She’s a nice mix of Eiffel and Minkowski in my opinion, and her origins just added to her appeal. I also really enjoy Mr. Cutter as an antagonist! He’s super creepy, but his charisma and cunning are what intrigued me. Villains like him are pretty much my aesthetic.

EIFFEL

A villain, huh? I wouldn’t go that far honestly, but the man is pretty creepy. And I think I’ll ignored any implications about the good Doctor for now in favor of getting to the next question. And hey! This one isn’t too long. What is your favorite fan theory or headcanon?

And survey says: I don’t really read many fan theories, but I love the headcanons that revolve around the gang staying in touch and helping each other out like one big family after they get back to Earth. I also really like the idea of Eiffel getting in touch with Anne once they get back home.

EIFFEL

Anne? Wait a minute… How could they have known about her? Nobody’s supposed to know except Cutter!

HERA

Officer Eiffel? Is everything okay?

EIFFEL

No, everything is not okay, Hera! I want to know how this mystery write seems to know things they shouldn’t! This is getting way too weird, even for this place!

HERA

I’m sure there’s a logical explanation, Eiffel. Maybe they work for Command-

EIFFEL

(Note: Officer Eiffel sounds incredibly upset.) Yeah, and this is Command’s way of screwing with me! This is just like the Empty Man again! No one knows what the hell’s going on, Command keeps sending these weird messages, and it’s freaking me out!

HERA

Eiffel! It’s okay!

EIFFEL

No, it’s not! I bet Command’s down there having a laugh making me dance for peanuts and I’m tired of it. I just- they shouldn’t- (Sigh) I’m going to go, I’m done with this.

(Note: Recording ends abruptly. It seems it didn’t take long for these recordings to illicit a reaction from Office Eiffel. More to follow in the upcoming days.)

END TRANSMISSION

#wolfmas2018

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waveridden · 6 years

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FIC: and you breathe (one breath at a time)

Lovelace goes somewhere warm, and quiet, where nobody has any idea who she is. Nobody, except for somebody who died in space six years ago.

Wolf 359, post-canon. 7.7k. Gen, Lovelace-centric, some implied/background ships. content warnings for some discussion of death/grief and PTSD.

With all my love to @travismcelrcy, who helped shape the ideas.

Read on Ao3 || title lyric

Sydney is bright in the summer, a constant barrage of sunlight that slams into Isabel full-force the second she steps out of the airport. It was raining when she left Shanghai. Or maybe she’s still not used to sunlight - not blue light or red light or artificial Hephaestus lighting. Honest-to-god sunlight.

Isabel slips a voice recorder out of her pocket and switches it on. “Note to self,” she murmurs, “double-check which vitamins sunlight is supposed to give you. Just in case that matters.” She doesn’t need to record captain’s logs anymore, hasn’t for a long time, but it’s the fastest way to keep track of things. Grocery lists and memories from the old crew and whatever else is worth hanging onto these days.

She left her suitcase back in Brussels, so it’s easy to wander the streets with nothing but a backpack and a vague recollection of places she should visit. She’s never been to Australia before. She’d only left the country once, before the Hephaestus, and that was to go to Niagara Falls for the weekend with some friends in high school.

(Sam had laughed when she told him, and she’d raised her eyebrows, said “You telling me you traveled a lot, Oklahoma boy?” like it was a challenge. It always was a challenge, and maybe she’d feel bad about it if he’d ever stopped rising to the challenge. If he hadn’t met her every step of the way, until-)

There’s a list of names tucked away in her backpack. She’s been trying to visit people who deserve to know what happened. Kuan’s sisters, who grieved by screaming. Victoire’s mother, who’d cried as Isabel told her in halting French what happened to her daughter. Sam’s family, who barely reacted at all. Like they already knew he was dead.

They probably did know, she supposes. It’s not like it was hard to guess.

Sydney’s beautiful. She tries to imagine Mace in the city as she walks through it, slowly. He’s not from Sydney, of course, he’s from some smaller town. He used to talk about it, but she can’t remember the name of it, and of course his files with Goddard don’t exist anymore. There’s next to no proof that he was ever there.

But he was here. She imagines him squinting in the sunlight, trying to read a street sign. She imagines him pointing at some local business and saying that there, Captain, that’s his best friend’s uncle’s ice cream shop. She imagines him painted bright in the sun, laughing with his boyfriend, pushing a stroller.

Isabel blinks. That one felt less imaginary.

He’s gone by the time she looks back, of course. She’s been seeing ghosts for the last month. All of Kuan’s sisters had his smile. Every tall man with a suit and a carefully disarming smile is Cutter. Hell, she even sees shades of Minkowski and Eiffel sometimes, even though she knows both of them are safe and sound back stateside. She’s used to it by now. She should be used to it by now.

She still goes straight to her hotel room. Bolts the door once it’s closed. Moves a chair in front of the door just for good measure. Good things never happen when the dead start showing up again. She knows that better than anyone.

Getting back to Earth goes like this:

Goddard debriefs them. It takes weeks, plural, because nobody’s sure what to do with their story. Two of the most important people in the company are currently space debris, and the third doesn’t even remember her own name. And all the rest of them are officially dead.

It’s Jacobi, actually, who’s most helpful in moving things forward. Lovelace gets the impression that it’s because he wants to get out of there as fast as possible, but she has to admit, it’s nice having someone who knows people. Kepler’s name pulls weight, and by extension so does Jacobi’s. It gets things in motion, even with the gaps in the power structure.

The process is also kept completely secret from the public, which they probably weren’t supposed to figure out. Jacobi guesses as much on the second day, snorts and says “it’d look bad for them to be caught in a lie this big,” and that’s supposed to be that. It’s hard to bring people back to life, in terms of paperwork. Probably a nightmare.

But they’re debriefed. They see doctors, who don’t know what to do with Lovelace, human and also decidedly not. They see therapists, who kind of wave Lovelace off because there’s absolutely nothing in their repertoire that could help them deal with aliens. They sit in corporate meeting after corporate meeting where Lovelace tries to focus on getting out and not how badly she wants to rip this company to shreds.

Goddard lets them go on a Tuesday morning. They reach Minkowski’s husband that night, living just outside of Boston, and all of them pile into a house that seems far too empty for one man. Lovelace gets a bedroom to herself. They figure out how to install Hera in the house, because Doug refuses to let her live in a box. She’s up and running by Wednesday morning.

Jacobi’s gone by Wednesday afternoon without so much as a goodbye. It stings, maybe more than it should, but Lovelace has faith that he’ll come back one day. If only because he’s bored.

By the early hours on Thursday she has a list of cities. Shawnee, Brussels, Shanghai, Sydney. She writes and crosses out Moscow a dozen times - even if Selberg was hers he also decidedly wasn’t, and she doesn’t owe that man any more of her sympathy - and does the same for New York City. Who says you can’t go home? Probably other people whose entire families think they died in space years ago.

She makes a second list for good measure. Victoire used to wax rhapsodic about the summer she spent in Iceland, and Kuan had endless stories about visiting cousins in Hawaii. Sam traveled constantly, which she wouldn’t expect from someone from Oklahoma, but he wanted to see the world. Or, no, he felt like it’d be a shame if he didn’t. A shame? An embarrassment? It’s hard to remember his exact words.

It’s hard to remember his exact voice.

Lovelace lifts her voice recorder, brand new, purchased from a RadioShack with a shiny Goddard-issued credit card. “Get back in touch with Canaveral, see if they have any of Lambert’s old logs somewhere. Shake them down if you have to.”

Isabel Lovelace has a valid passport Thursday night. She says her goodbyes on Friday morning, promises to call and hugs Eiffel a little tighter than she should and leaves. She has more ghosts than the rest of them. It’s time to put them to rest.

The problem, which she learns in Oklahoma, is that as much as she wants to get this over with, she can’t start with the families. She tells Sam’s mother what happened one day, his father the next, and then if she stays in Oklahoma for one more goddamn second she thinks she’s going to suffocate, so she’s in Brussels the day after that.

(“That could just be an effect of Oklahoma,” Minkowski - no, Renee says, when Isabel calls her, now in Brussels and still not quite breathing right. “I mean, I’ve never really been there, but it sounds… like Oklahoma.”

“Maybe,” Isabel allows. “But if I’m going to be here, I should start with the tourist thing, right? Instead of just jumping in with the… bad news.”

“The tourist thing,” Renee echoes, in that voice that means she’s not laughing at Isabel, per se, but she’s definitely laughing and it just so happens that Isabel said something funny. “You mean relaxing?”

“I guess I do.”

“You’ve earned it.”

She has. She’s earned it and re-earned it and the universe probably owes her a full year of not dealing with other people’s problems at this point. “Then maybe I’ll stay in Belgium for a while.”

“Just make sure you call,” Renee says, soft and careful. She never says goodbye, only asks for Isabel to call again. And she always does.)

It takes two weeks in Brussels before she has the stomach to find Victoire’s family. After that she stops over in Moscow for all of two days, just to see the sights, and then it’s three weeks in Shanghai. And of course, by the end of that she’s ready to snap in half, so she takes a week for herself in Thailand to recover.

Sydney is warm, not as warm as Thailand but also sunnier. It’s not quiet, but it’s just her and her ghosts there. And it’s going to take a little more work to track down Fisher’s boyfriend - she knows his name’s Corey, he’s a history teacher, and he lives somewhere reasonably close to Sydney - so she might as well take another break.

She ends up on a beach, one of the quieter ones. It’s a weekday morning so it’s not terribly crowded, just a few families that Isabel makes a point of staying away from, carving out her own quiet corner in the sand. She sets up with a towel and an umbrella and a stack of books that she got from airports and-

-and her phone starts ringing.

Isabel sighs. It’d be easy, it’d be so easy to just ignore it, but the fact is not a lot of people call her. This number isn’t in enough databases to get calls, and it would be… inconsiderate if she didn’t take full advantage of Goddard generously footing all her bills for a little while. Including the bill for international calls.

She smoothly reaches into her backpack, resting a carefully-calculated arm’s length away from her on the sand, and swipes to answer. “You’ve reached the phone of Isabel Lovelace. I’m currently unavailable because I finally got to a real beach where I can relax for a while, so leave a message if-”

“Oh, I’m sorry, is this a bad time?” Hera asks, not sounding sorry at all.

Isabel rests back on her towel. “No, Hera, it’s not. Unless there’s an emergency, because I am halfway around the world right now and can’t help.”

“No emergencies. Thank god.”

She smiles, relaxing a little as she does. “And you’re bored?”

“Horribly.”

“What do you do now that nothing’s constantly going wrong?”

“Not much,” Hera admits. “I’ve been teaching myself new languages.”

“Programming language or human language?”

“A bit of both?”

“Of course,” Isabel says. She thinks idly that maybe she would’ve been sarcastic about that, once upon a time, but now it comes out fond. Indulgent. Hera complained about being in a house and how it was so much smaller than the Hephaestus, but now she has the Internet. There’s only so much complaining she can do with the entirety of human knowledge at her fingertips. “How’s everyone?”

Hera hums. “Minko- uh, Renee- shoot. Is it weird that I’m still having trouble with that?”

“It’s only been two months, Hera.”

“But I talk to her every day.”

“And how many days did you call her Minkowski?”

“More than sixty,” Hera admits. “Okay. Uh, Renee’s looking for jobs, although nobody’s really sure what kind of thing she should look for. Doug’s a waiter now, all the customers love him.”

“And everyone’s in one piece?”

“In one piece.” She says it so proudly that Isabel can’t help but smile. “And Renee’s been helping me practice my French.”

“Do you need to practice?”

“Of course I need to practice, just because I know the whole language doesn’t mean I know how to speak it right.”

“One of these days, you should learn a made-up language. Or make your own.”

“I’ve already looked into making up my own, but it’s not as easy as you might think. It’s kind of a fun side project, it’d be nice to talk to a linguist or something sometime. Figure out how-”

“Lovelace?” says someone, about three feet to her right.

She drops her phone. She hadn’t noticed anyone coming towards her, and these days there’s no way to tell if it’s someone hostile or not. From the other end of the phone Hera says something but Isabel’s hand is already halfway into her bag, where she has a knife waiting for her, and she looks up to see who it is and squints against the sunlight and-

“Lovelace,” says Mace Fisher, like he thinks she’s going to disappear.

Slowly, Isabel pulls her hand away from her backpack and lifts her sunglasses, just as Fisher - it can’t be, it has to be - drops to a crouch, then his knees. His hair’s longer now, curling in loose spirals around his cheeks. He has the same scar down one side of his nose. He’s wearing the most horrific swim trunks that she’s seen in her entire life, and he’s staring, and he’s here.

“Fisher,” she says, and he gulps, and suddenly her eyes are stinging. He sits back on his heels, looking winded, and Isabel remembers her phone. She snatches it up and takes a deep breath. “Hera.”

“Ca- Isabel, what’s going on, is everything okay?”

Is everything okay. Of course, everything’s fine. Just Lovelace and her ghosts again. “I’m going to have to call you back.”

“That’s not a yes.”

“I don’t know yet, Hera.” She’s still watching him, of course she is. He looks somewhere off over Isabel’s shoulder, mouths something that she doesn’t bother to try and understand. He must not be here alone. “It’s… complicated.”

“Are you safe?”

“I think so.”

“Call us back,” Hera says, voice small. “Just- just to be on the safe side.”

“Of course,” Isabel says, and hangs up. Fisher is still there, so that’s a good sign, probably. If this isn’t real then at least her brain is collapsing all at once. Hell, they have no idea what the sun’s radiation is going to do to her weird alien brain. Maybe long-term exposure induces hallucinations. Maybe this is the last thing she sees before her internal organs turn to soup. It could be worse, she figures.

Fisher’s still staring at her.

“So,” she says carefully. “This… is new.”

“You died in space,” Fisher says. “I don’t know if you heard.”

“No, I’ve been told.” She looks him up and down. She listened to him die, during that meteor storm. They all did. “You… also died in space.”

He snorts. “Apparently not.”

They never found a body. Of course they didn’t, it was deep space, but they never had anything to remember him by, other than what he left behind. “Apparently not,” she agrees, and her voice is a little thicker than she expected. “How about that?”

Fisher swallows. “The others-”

Isabel’s breath catches. None of the others had been home, when she visited. “They- Mace-”

“Oh,” Fisher breathes, and lunges forward. Isabel lets him, reaches out, pulls him in. And he feels real, not like a hallucination, not a ghost. He’s as real as she is and he’s squeezing her like he’s trying to make sure of it, one hand pressing her head into the crook of his shoulder. “Captain-”

“Oh, god, don’t call me captain,” she laughs, and he huffs out something like a sob, warm against the back of her neck. “I’m nobody’s captain anymore, got it?”

“Aye-aye,” Fisher says, and fans one of his hands out on her back. Isabel laughs again and her eyes are still stinging but she’s not crying, she can’t cry until she understands. “What are you doing here, anyways?”

Isabel sits back on her heels, keeping one hand pressed against Fisher’s shoulder. Just in case he disappears. He pulls away too, a little reluctantly, but one of his hands drops to her knee. “I was, uh. Trying to say goodbyes, you could call it.”

“Ah,” Fisher says. “I take it you haven’t been back long, then.”

“A couple months.” She shrugs. “Goddard… wasn’t interested in letting us go.”

Fisher raises his eyebrows. “Us.”

“It’s a long story.”

“I can imagine.”

“What about you?” Isabel rubs a hand across her eyes, probably scrubbing salt and sand into them, which has to be why the stinging doesn’t go away. “What… how long have you been back?”

Fisher shrugs. “Five years, give or take.”

“So you got back after the first mission.”

“First mission,” Fisher repeats, something like dread creeping into his voice. “Captain-”

“Isabel.”

“If you’re Isabel then I’m Mace.”

Isabel nods and takes a deep breath. “It’s… a really long story. It’s one I can tell you, but-”

“Daddy!” a child’s voice shouts, from somewhere behind Isabel. Mace is on his feet in a flash, so fast that she barely has time to mourn the loss of contact before he’s off and running. It’s just enough to make her panic, so she whips around, climbing to her feet in the process. Her sunglasses tilt dangerously to one side, threatening to fall off, and she manages to settle them back on her face just as she spots Mace again.

He’s crouching low, looking seriously between two kids. Twins, if Isabel had to guess, both of them dark-haired and olive-skinned. They don’t look anything like Mace, but one of them has the same stubborn mouth, and one has the same honest eyes. His kids, if ever she’s seen them.

Cautiously, she takes a couple of steps closer. Mace doesn’t notice, talking in a low, serious voice to the twins. “Five minutes, alright? Five more minutes on the sand and then we can go back in the water, how does that sound?”

“But Kuan said he’s gonna squish my sand castle,” says the one with Mace’s mouth, and Isabel nearly takes a step back. “And I don’t want him to!”

Mace looks seriously at the twin with his eyes. “Kuan.”

“I’m not gonna squish it,” Kuan mutters. “But Sam said his was better than mine, and that’s not nice. ”

Mace turns back to the other twin, looking exasperated. “Sam-”

“Mine’s better,” Sam protests, but he falters instantly and turns to his brother. “I’m sorry, Kuan. You’re right, it wasn’t nice.”

“I’m sorry I said I was gonna squish yours,” Kuan says seriously. “That wasn’t nice either.”

“Good job, boys,” Mace says, and both of the twins brighten up instantly. It figures that Mace would have the most well-adjusted kids Isabel has ever seen. “Daddy just needs three more minutes to talk to his friend, and-”

“Friend?” Sam demands, and both twins turn to her immediately, with that uncanny perceptive stare that children always have.

Isabel’s hands are shaking. She notices it sort of absently, the same way she notices there’s a man with a sleeping baby lying on his chest watching them intently, the same way she notices that the only clouds in the sky are wispy and light and dreamlike. Like it doesn’t affect her that she’s having trouble breathing.

She glances at Mace, over the tops of her sunglasses, and he nods slightly, so she takes a couple steps forward and drops into a crouch next to him. “Hi, guys.”

“You’re friends with Daddy?” asks Kuan.

Isabel nods. “I am. I used to work with him, a long time ago.”

“In space?”

“Yes, in space.”

“Whoa,” Kuan whispers. “Was he cool?”

“The coolest.”

Mace snorts and nudges her with his shoulder, still as solid and real as anything. “Second after you, maybe.”

“Oh, definitely,” Isabel says, with an exaggerated nod, and both of the twins giggle. “But, you know, it’s hard to measure up to me.”

“Daddy’s cool!” Sam bounces up and down. “This one time, this one time he was making pancakes, and he flipped them in the air!”

“In the air?” Isabel repeats, trying to sound like it’s the coolest thing she’s ever heard. “You know, that might just be cooler than me.”

“Never, Captain,” Mace mumbles, and Isabel rolls her eyes. Maybe she shouldn’t teach kids to roll their eyes, but if they’re living with Mace, they’re probably going to be supernaturally patient. Someone has to teach them. “Boys, we can go in the water as soon as I’m done talking to Miss Isabel, alright?”

“Miss Isabel?” Kuan turns so he’s looking at her and leans in, putting his face very, very close to hers. It takes all her self control not to pull back. Children can smell fear, or something. “Like baby Izzy?”

“Baby Izzy,” Isabel repeats. “Is that… a TV show, or something?”

Kuan giggles. “No, silly, it’s our sister!”

“Sister,” Isabel echoes, feeling like a broken record. They have a sister named Isabel. That can’t be right. She turns, carefully, to look at Mace, who is staring intently at the sand by her feet. “Mace.”

“Middle name’s Victoire,” he mumbles, and meets her eyes, looking sheepish. “There’s not a lot else you can do to remember people, these days.”

She understands. When the world has already mourned and moved on, when Isabel’s mission to say her goodbyes was met only with acceptance and grief that’s still heavy on her skin, there’s not much else to do, other than remembering. He had to grieve already, without her.

“Mace,” she says again, her throat so thick that it hurts to say. She swallows a couple times, until she feels like she can breathe again, and says, “We can talk later.”

“Yeah?” Mace says, and she wonders if he expected her to want to talk to him. He looks so… hopeful.

“Yeah.” She takes a deep breath. “I can… you know, I brought books. I have a cell phone that I mostly understand how to use. I can kill time.”

Mace laughs. “Yeah, those have changed a lot. You want to come in the water with us?”

Isabel has gone swimming once, in the last two months. It was in a Goddard facility, for some kind of fitness check-up. It’d been nice at first, cool and refreshing. Chlorine is one of those things that she’d forgotten, not unlike the exact flavor of potato chips and how to talk to children, and she’d even appreciated the sting in her eyes.

It’d taken eight minutes and forty-one seconds, as per her official Goddard chart, before the panic set in. Before the water stopped feeling like water, and all she knew was that she was floating, and if she was floating she must’ve been back in space, back on the Hephaestus, and if she was on the station then she wasn’t safe, and-

Nine minutes. A new record, said the Goddard tech who was observing her. Most former astronauts don’t even make it to five.

“Maybe later,” Isabel says. As long as her feet are on the ground, she should be fine.

“She can sit with me,” someone says, off to one side. It’s the man with the sleeping baby, still watching them. He has one hand resting on the baby’s back, and he looks relaxed, but his eyes are as sharp as anything she’s ever seen. “If you want.”

Isabel nods slowly. “I think I’d like that.”

Mace reaches out and brushes some sand off one of Isabel’s knees, leaving his hand to rest on her thigh. “Alright.”

“Alright,” Isabel repeats, and looks back at the twins. “Sam. Kuan.” She has to take a deep breath, because fuck, even that is hard to say, isn’t it? How does Mace do it every day? “It was very nice meeting you.”

“You too,” Kuan says, very seriously. Just like any kid trying to pretend to be a grown-up. It reminds her of Hui, of her Kuan.

“Are you gonna still be Daddy’s friend?” Sam asks. “Because you look like a good friend.”

A good friend. A good captain who lost her crew and barely scraped out with her second crew. A good person trying to say her goodbyes.

“I will be his friend,” she says. It’s too awkward and stilted for a kid but it’s all she can manage. Friends are hard to come by these days.

Mace squeezes her leg and gets to his feet. “Who’s ready to go in the ocean!”

The twins both scream in excitement, and Isabel glances back at the man who is most certainly Corey. “You mind if I bring my things over?”

“Course not,” Corey says, amiable as anything. “Although I hope you don’t mind that I’m going to be asking you a few questions.”

Isabel smiles faintly. None of them talked about Their People Back Home too often, at least not in the first few hundred days, but she still remembers Mace talking about his boyfriend. He used to say Corey was smart. And suspicious. She can see that already.

As soon as she settles in next to him, Corey points out towards the water. “I had to come to Sydney for a work conference. It was Mace’s idea to make a trip out of it and bring the kids, and he’s been wrangling all three of them by himself for most of the week.”

Isabel follows where he’s pointing. Mace is in the shallows of the ocean, each twin holding his hand. Every time a wave comes in, no matter how small, they all try to jump over it. She can hear the twins shrieking and laughing, and Mace laughing with them. “How old are they?”

“They turned four last month.” Corey smiles faintly. “He was self-conscious about the name thing. Originally it was going to be Samuel Kuan, and then we found out we’d be adopting twins.”

“And you were okay with it?”

“Of course. My boyfriend comes back from space, from the actual dead, and says he wants to name the kids after the people he lost? What kind of a person would say no?”

Isabel nods, and looks at the baby still asleep on Corey’s chest. “She’s quiet.”

Corey snorts and strokes the baby’s - Izzy’s back, smiling down at her. “Tired herself out screaming earlier.”

“I hear that babies do that.”

“You have no idea.”

“How did he come back?”

“We’re still not sure,” Corey admits, and looks back out towards Mace and the twins. “He says the last thing he remembers is getting knocked off the station by a meteor, and then next thing he knows he’s back on the station two years later with nobody but that doctor of yours there.”

Something cold creeps up Isabel’s spine. “And what did the good doctor do?”

“Lied to everyone who came to rescue them.”

“Lied?”

“Said that there was some kind of misunderstanding, that Mace had been with them the whole time in a coma.” Corey shakes his head. “They made it back to Earth and Selburg disappeared. Mace looks for him sometimes.”

“That’s good of him,” Isabel says, because it is. Even if Hilbert doesn’t deserve a damn good thing anymore. Even if he infected Mace with Decima for the sake of research, for some greater good that turned out to be no good at all. Maybe it was his penance, bringing Mace back to Earth. After all, he knew the theta scenario. He probably knew there was no point in running experiments on an alien.

“You don’t sound like you mean it.” Corey looks at her, eyes narrowing. “Do you know how he came back?”

Isabel exhales. “I do.”

Corey takes a deep breath. “I’m not going to ask you to explain, but Mace will.”

“I know.”

“And be careful, when you do. Whatever it is, he already has questions.”

“What kind of questions?

“Doctors have been saying he’s in peak condition for the last five years. They also keep saying that he breaks some of their equipment.”

Psi waves, Isabel thinks. Psi waves, or alien biology, or one of those other things that Pryce and Cutter went on and on about.

Because he’s like her.

“I’ll be careful,” she says, and turns away from Corey’s eyes, back towards the shoreline. One of the twins jumps too high and crashes to his knees in the water. Mace lets go of his hand, just long enough to scoop him up and balance him on his hip. “I’ll tell him the truth, if he asks, but I’m not going to scare him away or anything.”

“Good,” Corey says quietly. “And I know we’ve never met before, but I’m glad you’re not dead.”

Isabel quirks a smile. “Thanks. I’m glad he came back to you.”

“Me too,” Corey murmurs. Mace picks up the other twin now, holding them both carefully, like it’s nothing. Like he was made to hold them. “Me too.”

Mace and Corey have to leave first, because when you have three kids you need to feed them lunch. They leave Isabel with Mace’s phone number, Corey’s number in case Mace’s phone dies, and a small collection of seashells that Kuan picked out for her.

(“I didn’t get her anything,” Sam whispers, looking absolutely horrified, and then proceeds to dump a child-size fistful of sand on each of Isabel’s thighs. “Is mud good for your skin?”

Mace, who’s reapplying sunscreen on Kuan, takes one look at Isabel’s face and laughs so hard that he has to sit down.)

And then they’re gone, and it’s Isabel, by herself on a beach. Just like she wanted.

The breeze keeps blowing. The air still tastes like salt. The waves keep crashing on the sand. There are still families around, but a few have filtered out, probably to go to lunch or school or whatever else families in Sydney have to do. Maybe they’re on vacation. Maybe they’re just passing through. Maybe she’s just passing through, although she’s not sure where exactly she’ll go after this. She still has that list: Reykjavik for Victoire, Honolulu for Kuan, Sao Paulo and Quebec and Copenhagen and San Francisco for Sam. Disneyland. New York. Boston.

She doesn’t remember getting to her feet, but the next thing she knows she’s standing in the shallows. The water’s around her ankles, lapping against her calves, gritty with sand and salt. It feels good. It’s grounding.

She’s holding her cell phone. Slowly, she punches in the numbers and holds her breath.

Renee picks up on the second ring. “Hey! I was just about to call you, I got a package from Goddard today. Apparently they archived all of your crew’s old logs on analog recorders. Less of a chance of a hacker accidentally finding some of Goddard’s dirty laundry. Hera and Dom are going to try and convert them to digital for you, although you can always come pick them up in person.”

Isabel swallows. The world seems too bright, suddenly. She’s not used to the sunlight, she might never be used to the sunlight again, she spent seven years in deep space and she was dead for three of those. Or maybe she was only alive for two of them.

She remembers Lambert’s voice. Or maybe she just remembers a ghost of it. It’d be another thing, another thing entirely, to have his logs. Or to have him in front of her. The way Mace was.

“Isabel?” Renee says cautiously. “Are you there?”

“There’s a baby here named after me,” Isabel says abruptly. It seems like the easiest entry point.

Renee goes quiet. Isabel takes the opportunity to lower herself so she’s sitting in the water. She’d forgotten what sand felt like, but it’s the kind of muddy sand that’s easy to bury your toes in. She has one foot halfway covered in mud when Renee finally says, cautiously, “We’ve only been back for two months.”

“I know.”

“That’s not enough time for that to happen.”

“She was adopted.”

“Who adopted her?”

“Mace Fisher, from my old crew.”

Another silence. This one only lasts long enough for Isabel to get the toes of her other foot into the sand, before: “Is there some kind of an explanation for this?”

“I think it’s another theta scenario.” She pauses. “Actually, I’m sure of it, because the only other option is that I just vividly hallucinated a two-hour encounter with five people, only one of whom I’d ever met before.”

“Who were the other four?”

“His partner and kids.”

“You never met them?”

“Never had the chance. Kids are all under the age of four anyways. For all I know-” Isabel swallows, hoping it wasn’t too obvious that her voice cracked. For all she knows it was just wishful thinking.

Renee sighs noisily. “Did you look them up on Facebook?”

“What?”

“Facebook. Finding a profile page to see if you were imagining them.”

Isabel blinks. “No.”

“Alrighty then,” Renee says briskly. It’s kind of a comfort: all business, no question of what it means if Isabel is seeing things, just another fact-finding mission. Isabel can hear her tap a few buttons, and then: “Hera, you busy?”

“No,” Hera says immediately. “No, I’m- Isabel! You hung up so fast earlier, was everything okay?”

“I ran into one of my old crew members,” Isabel says, as no-nonsense as she possibly can. Renee’s certainly not fooled, but Hera just might be, if she plays her cards right. “We’re trying to figure out what’s going on.”

“We’re looking for a Facebook page,” Renee explains. “Or some other kind of social media.”

“Ooooh, finally, something interesting!”

Isabel grins. She can’t see Renee, all the way in Massachusetts, but she can still imagine Renee grinning back at her. “I don’t have a lot for you to go on,” she warns. “His name is Mason Fisher, and his partner’s name is Corey.”

“Last name?”

“Don’t know.”

“Occupation?”

“Corey’s a history teacher, or at least he was seven years ago. Mace was in the military.”

“Anything else?”

“They have three kids, Sam, Kuan, and Izzy.”

“And they live in Australia?”

“Yes. Although I’m not sure where.”

Hera hums to herself. “You sure like to give a girl a challenge, I’ll tell you that. And my first Facebook search isn’t picking up anything.”

Isabel’s heart hiccups in her throat. “Nothing?”

“Not yet, but I started with all the parameters in place and I’m broadening the search as we go.”

“Try the other sites too,” Renee suggests. “Twitter, or Instagram, or whatever people are using these days.”

“I’m already running those too,” Hera says. Isabel knows that tone of voice. It’s the “I don’t want to tell you my systems are failing, but they are” voice. “I’m still not seeing anything. And I’m running Corey with an E-Y, Cory with just a Y, I’m putting K’s in there-”

“Have you tried LinkedIn?” a new voice says. “If they’re trying to fly under the radar, which they very well might be, they won’t be on Facebook, but most professionals are on there these days.”

“Oooh,” Renee says softly. “Good one, Dom.”

“Thank you. Hi, Isabel.”

“Hi, Dominik.”

“Are you still in Thailand?” Dominik asks, sounding completely unbothered by the fact that his wife’s best friend is searching for evidence of someone who might not exist. Isabel likes that about him. He takes everything in stride.

“Australia, actually.”

“Staying in the warm half of the world, I see.”

Isabel snorts. “Yeah, it’s great, it’s always sunny in Sydney.”

“Oh, god,” Renee mutters. “You know, it’s crazy to say this, but I’m still not used to the sun. Like, the actual sun, you know what I mean? Heat that isn’t from a vent, light that isn’t from a bulb…”

“Or a star outside the window,” Isabel adds. “And isn’t blue.”

“Isn’t blue!” Renee snaps her fingers. “I keep expecting everything to be blue!”

“And way colder.”

“God, way colder. And I keep forgetting about gravity.”

Isabel laughs, a little more wetly than she intends, but she can’t help it. “Earlier today I was lying on the beach, reading a book, and I went to put the book down-”

“Oh, no,” Renee laughs, like she’s already figured out the punchline to the joke. Or already lived it out a dozen times over.

“Except, of course, I just let go of it, and it fell-” Isabel smacks her knee with one hand. “Right into my solar plexus.”

Dom chuckles. “Hopefully it wasn’t too heavy.”

“Eh, just an airport paperback. Heaviest thing about it was the main character’s tragic backstory.” She sighs. “Worst part was that I cursed loudly on a public beach and almost woke up a sleeping baby, but-”

“Check your phone,” Hera says suddenly. “Is this him?”

Isabel pulls her phone away from her ear and looks at it. The message from Hera opens on its own, as messages from Hera are wont to do. It’s a professional headshot, much cleaner and more put-together than he’d been on the beach.

“Yeah,” Isabel says, a little winded. “That’s Corey.”

“Awesome,” Hera says, clearly relieved. “Corey Rapp, that’s C-O-R-E-Y, has a LinkedIn profile, thank you, Dominik. He’s still a history teacher at a secondary school north of Sydney.��Government records show he adopted twins about four years ago and a daughter last year, like you said. No evidence of a spouse or partner, at least not on the record, but knowing what Goddard’s like, that doesn’t mean anything. Doesn’t look like Corey has a Facebook or anything under his own name.”

“Neither do I,” Renee points out. “If anything that makes them smart. Means they’re watching out.”

“Good choice,” Dominik murmurs. Isabel agrees, would say as much if she could remember how to breathe.

Mace is here. He’s alive, more than six years after he died, and he’s also definitely an alien. She’s going to have to tell him. Maybe Corey, too, depending on how Mace takes it. She’s not the only one in the world, and somehow, that’s worse than if she were alone. At least if it were just her she wouldn’t have anything to feel guilty about.

“Lovelace,” Renee says quietly.

Isabel blinks. Her skin is hot. Right. Sunlight. Beach. She’s here. “Hey.”

“You okay?”

“I’m good.”

“Hera and Dom left,” Renee says cautiously. “You kinda went dark for a minute there. Anything you wanna talk about?”

“Not really.”

“How about things you don’t want to talk about?”

“Oh, there are way more of those, don’t worry.”

“I’d be more worried if there weren’t,” Renee admits. “So. You found your alien crewmate who survived the most unlikely series of events that any human has experienced.”

“You really think that’s more unlikely than what we went through?”

“Eh.” Isabel can picture the accompanying shrug, almost jokingly nonchalant. “It’s gotta be on the list, right? Anything involving aliens is… up there.”

“Oh, up there,” Isabel mutters, and Renee makes a soft noise that somehow sounds like a smile. “How’s Doug?”

“Definitely the most well-adjusted out of all of us.”

“Hera said he got a job?”

“He works the night shift at Olive Garden. Customers love him.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah,” Renee says, and then goes quiet, and Isabel feels… bad, for a few seconds. She’d been with Renee and Doug for a while, but what they’d had, the casual trust and the years of determination to survive, was irreplaceable. Doug-and-Renee is never going to be the same as Eiffel-and-Minkowski.

“How about you?” Isabel asks, and then kind of wants to kick herself. That’s not necessarily a better talking point.

Renee hums. “Better than I’ve been. Dom and I decided I can’t go back to the military, what with being legally dead, so I’ve been trying to put together the case against Goddard.”

“By yourself?”

“With Hera, sometimes.”

“So by yourself.”

“Mostly,” Renee admits. “I was going to wait for you to come back, but…”

But this trip was supposed to take two weeks, tops, and Isabel hasn’t come back yet. But she has a second list of places to visit. But now she found somewhere else that she could stay for a while. But you can’t plan on someone who might not come back, don’t you know that by now, Captain?

“I’ll help once I’m back,” Isabel says, which she figures is the most honest thing she can say. When she’s ready she’s going to burn Goddard to the ground. Which reminds her: “Have you heard anything from Jacobi?”

“Not yet.”

“And you haven’t tracked him down?”

“Isabel,” Renee chides. “He’s an adult, he’s not my responsibility, and if his way of handling it is leaving, then I’m not here to judge him for it.”

“So that’s a no,” Isabel says, and grins when Renee groans. “He’ll turn up sooner or later.”

“Yeah, I know. And what about you?”

“What about me?”

“Fisher’s alive,” Renee says, like Isabel could have possibly forgotten. “You’re not the only theta scenario. You’re in another new country by yourself. Take your pick. I have a couple reasons to be worried here.”

And Isabel thinks about it, actually thinks about it. It’d be easy to lie, sure, but Renee would know, and she figures if they’re in this whole space trauma business together she might as well be honest.

She pulls one of her feet out of the sand, sticking it into the water. “I'm coping,” she says slowly. “It’s early yet in the process. I think I might be going through the opposite of the five stages of grief.”

“Is that going through the stages in backwards order or experiencing the opposite of each stage?”

“I’ll let you know.”

“Thinking you were hallucinating could be a form of denial,” Renee says, far too thoughtful. “Or the opposite of acceptance? Is that how it works?”

“I don’t know, shrinks gave up on me, remember?” Isabel’s phone buzzes in her hand, and she glances at the screen. “Mace is calling me.”

“Then answer!”

“Okay,” Isabel says, and then, “Thank you.”

Renee doesn’t ask what she’s thanking her for. She’s smart like that. “Any time. Time zones don’t matter, just call.”

“I will,” Isabel says. It’s not quite a lie. “Talk to you soon, Renee.”

“Talk to you soon, Isabel.”

Isabel swipes over to answer. “Mace.”

“Isabel,” Mace says brightly. She almost doesn’t catch the note of surprise. “I realized I forgot to ask how long you’re in Sydney.”

“Until I leave.”

“No dates?”

“Well, you know, international travel gets a lot easier when a multibillion dollar company is footing the bill.”

“Huh,” Mace says. “Well, if you’re not busy tonight-”

“Isabel,” Renee says, sounding far too amused, and Isabel almost jumps out of her skin in surprise. “You didn’t hang up on me.”

Isabel frowns. “Apparently not. Did I make it a conference call?”

“You’re still not used to the new phone,” Renee says smugly, which is completely unfair. Phones have changed a lot in seven years, and Isabel is entitled to a few moments of staggering confusion. “That’s okay, you know.”

“Took me a while to get used to it too,” Mace says, in what’s probably supposed to be a sympathy move. “Touch screens and all.”

“You must be Mace Fisher,” Renee says, and Isabel’s breath catches. It’s so outrageously her, making a point of acknowledging that she can hear the person on the other end of the phone. “I’m Renee Minkowski. Former commander of the final mission to the USS Hephaestus Station, which is currently space dust.”

“Can’t say I’m sad to hear about that,” Mace admits. “And Captain, you owe me… so many explanations for all of that.”

“Many, many explanations,” Isabel agrees. “I can pay for drinks too.”

“I’ll leave you two to make plans now.” Renee pauses, and Isabel can feel the smugness from thousands of miles away. It’s strangely comforting. “Isabel, don’t worry, I can hang up on my own.”

“I’m so happy for you,” Isabel says as dryly as possible. “I’ll call you soon, Renee.”

“You’d better,” Renee says, and then there’s a soft beep.

Isabel exhales. “So. Drinks?”

“I probably shouldn’t leave my hotel, if Corey’s alone with the kids, but-”

“Hotel bar?”

“Hotel bar. I’ll send you the address.”

“Let me know when it’s a good time to come.”

“I will.” Mace pauses. “So, we can talk about this later, but…”

“But?”

“Renee, hm?”

Isabel groans. “Mace.”

“Are you guys close?”

“Come on.”

“No, I’m just saying, you sounded happy to talk to her.”

“That’s because I was.”

“Good,” Mace says, sounding pleased. “I have to run now, I just wanted to call and check.”

“Yeah,” she says softly. “I’ll see you tonight, Mace.”

“I’ll see you tonight,” he echoes, and then there’s that soft beep again, and Isabel’s alone on the beach.

One of her feet is still buried in the sand. Carefully, she wiggles her toes. The mud squishes between them. It almost tickles, and she can feel some of the sand dissolving in the water. The shallows are still lapping around her, against her hips, her thighs, one hand that she plants in the sand while she cradles her phone in the other.

There was a point where she thought she’d never make it back to a beach. She hadn’t been to many beaches before space, and definitely not many with actual oceans. The Air Force isn’t exactly interested in destination resorts, after all. But here she is. Sitting on a beach in Sydney.

Isabel swirls her hand through the water, letting the sand cloud around her. She never thought she would feel sand again. Or sun. Or the sheer gratitude of knowing that someone else made it out alive. She has another list, one that’s been getting longer: things she’s getting to experience again. Maybe for the first time, depending how you look at it.

Sydney is bright in the summer. There are people waiting for her in Boston, and a list of cities she has to visit. There’s a stack of books on the beach, next to her backpack, underneath an umbrella. She should go back to those and make some kind of progress, or at the very least make sure nobody takes her book before she can finish it.

She stays in the ocean, just a little longer. It’s not every day that she gets the chance.

#wolf 359 #wolf 359 fic #w359 fic #isabel lovelace #mace fisher #waveridden.fic #i'm not tagging anything else this is already niche as fuck

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theforgottengn · 6 years

Text

Issues In Trust

Characters: November, Mike, Lima, Oscar, Romeo, Quebec

Word Count: 2,175

Trigger Warning: Swearing, Fighting, Death

A/N: So… I’m not a big fan of this ending but hey I’m still figuring out how to write these things. But it’s the end so that’s good I guess. Also I’m a bit of a dumb-dumb and completely forgot some important characteristics writing this thing.

Parts: X, X, X, X, X

Summary: November and her boys are tasked with protecting a Navy SEAL. But in the world of espionage you never know who you can trust. Especially when the person you’re supposed to save won’t trust you. Click that read more if you want.

XXXXX

Quebec reached down and wrapped an arm around Romeo’s upper body. Romeo winced in pain but nodded that he was ready. Pulling him up from the floor slowly Q guided his friend to a standing position. Once he was back on his own two feet Romeo nudged out of Quebec’s grasp. Despite needing his friend’s help Romeo wanted to show that he was indeed capable. Even if he was only capable of standing and walking at the moment.

Don’t be a baby, he said to himself, you can do this.

Romeo teetered for a second and Quebec shot him a worried look. But he righted himself quickly enough and smiled. He could do this. He needed to do this. Q smiled back and went to work gathering all of Romeo’s bloody clothes, and bloody towels, from the floor. Once he had them in his hands he left Romeo to watch Minkowski. He carried the clothes to the bathroom and emptied them into the sink. They piled inside the small sink and made a small mound. Patting his pockets he searched for the lighter he knew he had somewhere. After a minute or two he found it.

Flicking the wheel ignited a flame and he threw the lighter onto the pile.

It had to be enough since he did not have his kit with him so he didn’t have any lighter fluid or gasoline. Nothing to fuel the fire and completely destroy the evidence. If Quebec was being honest with himself he felt naked without his gear. He felt helpless with only the pocket knife even though he could turn anything into a weapon if the need arose. None of those facts changed how he felt.

“Q, he’s waking up!”

He shook his head and watched the flames for a minute. Then he left the bathroom and stared at Douglas Minkowski. He stirred and began to come around. Quebec really wanted to shoot this man where he sat and he just needed the right reason. What Minkowski did to the two of them was reason enough in his book but other people would disagree. And besides there was the fact that the man wanted to kill everyone involved in H.E.R.A.C.L.E.S. This man had to die for that and that alone.

The blood on his face had dried and turned a dark red; crusting over his lips and his broken nose. His left eye was swollen shut and bruises had already formed around it; staining the skin with color. He looked ghastly.

And yet he still laughed; “Heh. Heh. You think you’ve won this fight? I may be down but I’m not out. I’m still alive so that means something. And you two are still alone in here with me. We’ll just have to see who leaves here alive tonight.”

“Oh sod off you bleeding tosser.”

“You seem angry little man. I wonder why that is? Oh right. My boys got you pretty good.”

“Knock him out again, mate, I’m tired of listening to this sod. I’m going to try the comm. link he’s definitely lying about that.”

Quebec ignored Romeo and crossed over to Minkowski. The petty officer tried to back away when he saw the look of death in Quebec’s eyes. Kneeling down in front of the man Quebec’s face was not five inches from the other man’s face. Too close for comfort. He grabbed Minkowski’s left hand, the one he had stepped on earlier, and squeezed. His face scrunched up in anger as he squeezed harder. Minkowski’s face twisted in pain but he refused to let a single sound leave his lips.

Then he laughed; “You can’t do anything to me. You don’t even exist to the rest of the world. You don’t have any badges or id to show that you have any authority. So what’s stopping me from calling the police and arresting the both of you?”

He scoffed and turned his shoulder so that it faced Minkowski. Quebec pointed at the U.S. flag patch on his uniform. Tapped it twice for emphasis. Then he turned the opposite direction and tapped the H.E.R.A.C.L.E.S. logo patch. He turned back to face Minkowski with a serious look.

“Badges? We ain’t got no badges! We don’t need no badges! I don’t need to show you no stinking badges!”

“I’ll get you for this,” Minkowski said through grit teeth, “I’ll get all of you.”

Now it was Quebec’s turn to laugh. The sound of it sent a chill down Minkowski’s spine. Quebec dug a finger into the knife wound in Minkowski’s thigh. The man winced in pain and Q stared him straight in the eye and said; “I will look for you, I will find you. And I will kill you.”

“You’re a funny guy.”

“You mean I’m funny like I’m a clown? I amuse you?”

Minkowski nodded.

“Leave him alone, Q,” Romeo interrupted. “He likes pushing your buttons, mate. You leave him alone and he won’t bother you.”

Quebec nodded and started to get up from the floor. But just before he did he spit on Minkowski’s face. The man grimaced in disgust and wiped the spit off with his hand. Quebec smiled and rose to his feet. Romeo nudged him slightly and pointed to his ear but said nothing. Quebec understood immediately and tapped his comm. to life.

“We’re too far away from them to actually call them. Send the distress signal.”

He tapped his comm. three times in a row and whispered; “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.”

XXXXX

November told the others her plan. Those in charge of H.E.R.A.C.L.E.S. had created two separate solutions to problems such as this one. The triple tap was one. And the trackers that each and every operative had embedded into the muscle of their inner thigh was the other. Whether these were created so that the handlers could keep better tabs on the ops or for moments like this one November didn’t know. She was just grateful that she remembered these things existed.

They decided to try the triple tap first.

“Good idea, Em,” Lima said. “If they’re still alive they definitely would’ve used the triple tap.”

“And sent out a distress signal,” she added with a nod.

But there still was the problem of distance. If they were too far away from the boys then none of their comms would catch the signal from the other ones. And the same went for the trackers. So they piled into the car and went back the way they came. November had an idea and just hoped that her hunch was right. They were always told to never assume things. It was one of the rules after all.

However there was nothing else they could do.

As Mike drove through the streets of Los Angeles, back to the safe house they were at the day before, the others tried the comm. link. So far nothing had came through. The group drove in silence for the most part. Only interrupting the monotony of it with short questions or comments. But the group had reached a consensus about what to do with Minkowski when they found him.

He was going to die.

It didn’t matter that they were supposed to protect this man with their lives. He changed the mission objective the moment he took their men. He hit them where he knew it would hurt. Minkowski had upset the balance and now he was going to pay.

“Smith is going to kill us,” Lima muttered nervously.

“No she won’t Bubba,” Mike said looking over at Lima. “She won’t do a thing. Want to know why?”

“Why?”

“’Cause we’re doin’ the right thing. We’re protectin’ our own.”

“No. We’re not,” Lima shot back. “We’re doing the complete opposite of the right thing, Mike! We’re going against orders and she’s going to kill us for it.”

“Don’t worry, Li,” Oscar said from the back of the car.

“Smith is probably not telling us everything that’s going on here. And who knows? She might want us to kill him.”

An hour or so later they made it back to Minkowsi’s safe house. There they tried the triple tap again. And sure enough their comms began emitting a light beeping. Faint and faraway it meant that they were close enough to get a signal but not close enough to be near where the signal was coming from.

But they had hope.

XXXXX

Romeo and Quebec both watched Minkowski. The man had recovered enough to stand on his feet. He wasn’t fully recovered of course but he was still dangerous in his condition. And with the added disadvantage of being without the proper weaponry they had nothing to threaten him with.

But Minkowski didn’t have any weapons either.

Stumbling on his feet the Navy SEAL tried to walk towards them.

Quebec took up a fighting stance. He wasn’t going to let this man hurt Romeo again. He didn’t care if he got hurt in the process but Romeo was already down and out once this mission. There was the possibility that he wouldn’t survive another. And so Quebec was more than ready to attack. He was about a foot or even less away from Minkowski; in range for a couple attacks.

Suddenly Minkowski swung a harsh left hook.

Ducking underneath the blow Quebec dodged it. But he came back up quickly enough to send a right hook into Minkowski’s gut. The man doubled over slightly and held the spot Q hit. His face scrunched up in pain.

“I told you I was down but not out,” he said between breaths. “But you didn’t listen. And now I’m going to kill you all.”

Quebec shrugged; “Mama says, ‘Stupid is as stupid does.’”

Minkowski rushed at him but Quebec moved out of the way just in time. Romeo snuck up behind the petty officer and kicked him in the back of the knee. His left leg gave out from underneath him and he kneeled on one foot. Breathing heavily he sat in that position for a minute or two.

The door to the apartment opened slowly and with a slight creak. The three men turned to look. Minkowski had a confused expression on his face but Romeo and Quebec knew exactly what was happening. The Navy SEAL turned to them with an angry look.

“But I ruined your comms! How could you call for back up?”

Romeo smiled; “That’s our little secret, Minkowski.”

The group entered the apartment with death in their eyes. But once they saw the other guys their expressions brightened into smiles. Mike threw Quebec a gun. He caught it with a sick and twisted smile. Cocking back the hammer he pointed it directly at Minowski’s forehead. As he did so he saw the Navy SEAL shake in fear. And that made him smile wider.

“You expect me to come quietly do you?”

“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.”

With that Quebec shot him in the head. Then he shot Minkowski once more. Double tapping a target was always something they were told to do. Even after years and years of doing this job that never changed. Minkowski’s body fell forward and then fell to the floor with a thud.

The others had searched the apartment in the meantime. The bedroom held more than enough evidence to justify the man’s execution. There were many notebooks with countless information on the operatives Minkowski worked with all those years ago. And a map of what he suspected the HERACLES base to look like hung on the wall. Opposite that, on the other wall was a world map and photos of operatives were taped up on the edges. Each photo had names written on them in red marker and were connected by a red string. The red strings all lead back to Afghanistan which was circled over and over again.

The words Never Forget were scrawled above the circle.

November tapped her comm. and called their handler for an extraction.

What about the SEAL?

“He’s dead. We killed him for what he did to Ro and Q. And because he had detailed plans to take out every operative.” Silence rang through the comm. and November waited for her handler to start berating her.

We suspected Minkowski had ulterior motives and needed to be disposed of but we weren’t sure. I’ll send Cleaners to gather the evidence. Make your way to the extraction point.

Good work.

They all breathed sighs of relief when their handler signed off. November was thankful that everyone was relatively okay; except for Romeo. But he would be properly patched up once they got back to base. And they were all safe from both Minkowski. It was good day.

Mike turned to Lima with a smile; “What did I tell you, Bubba, there was nothin’ to worry ‘bout. We’re fine.”

“Well, you did almost kill us all earlier,” Oscar said with a laugh.

“Okay, someone needs to fill us in on what we missed,” Romeo said as they left the apartment.

#oc story #oc short story #oc short #here's the last part #another story finished #even though it sucks #november company #agent november #agent mike #agent lima #agent oscar #agent romeo #agent quebec #commander smith #tw swearing #tw death #tw fighting

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caladblog · 7 years

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this whole life’s a hallucination

Captain Isabel Lovelace has a chat with the dead, shortly after she's left that land for the third time.

Plus, Aperture Futuristics, everyone murdering everyone else, magical girl transformation sequences on LSD, communal blood, and the embarrassing thing that happened at your junior prom.

[Big-ass spoilers for basically everything through Episode 46: Boléro. I fudged the end of the episode a little because you're not my real dad.

This fic is brought to you by Variations on a Theme, my personal philosophy on identity/reality, and me being super gay. Please consider supporting these sponsors on Patreon

Only two months til it gets jossed! *pops champagne*]

The thing in the body bag writhes.

No.

Lovelace, in the body bag, writhes.

This is the tableau for a solid thirty seconds, set in the U.S.S. Hephaestus's picturesque cargo bay: A captain who was shot in the head roughly ten hours ago seizes and coughs, wrestling motion and consciousness from the early stages of rigor mortis. Nearest to her, drifting closer, a communications officer stares blankly. Opposite side, drifting further away, a man who makes things that break other things also stares blankly. Perpendicular to them and several feet away, a recently-usurped colonel presents his handcuffed wrists with a pleasant smile that never reaches his eyes, watching, sharklike, the final person present in this scene. Nearest to the door, a sometimes-lieutenant sometimes-commander looks back at him, clutching her handgun like it's the only thing in the universe that still makes sense (which it very well could be).

Compulsory musical accompaniment: Boléro weaving in and out with static as an autopilot/mother program struggles for control of the station. This might be easier if she knew the specifics of what she was struggling against, but, then again, maybe not.

In media res. Diabolus ex machina. Ready to begin?

(Your answer to that question is irrelevant.)

Hera silences the overture with a synthetic gasp and several things snap at once.

Jacobi scrambles backward as effectively as he can with his hands and feet chained together, mumbling a crescendo of "what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck Colonel what the fuck--"

Kepler ignores him in favor of jangling the handcuffs and saying sweetly, "Limited time offer, Commander. It's in everyone's best interests if you take it. Just think: all the answers you've wanted, all the answers you've killed for--"

Minkowski clicks the safety off and takes aim at his center mass, nerves drawn taut as a bowstring, shouting, "For once in your miserable life, shut your god damned mouth--"

All of this leaves Eiffel the only one left watching the-- Lovelace. Her movements are less epileptic now, more... deliberate, waves of tension rolling down her body as muscles contract and relax in rhythm. Her breathing is still too deep, too harsh, but even that's starting to smooth out. He's close enough to see her pulse through the thin skin of her throat, rapid but steady, and as everyone else yells in the background she begins to settle. Not limp, but at ease. Not dead, but unconscious. And then her head turns a little and she frowns and mutters something inaudible, incoherent, almost like she's... having a bad dream.

"I think she's waking up," he says haltingly, freezing Jacobi and Minkowski in place.

"It, Officer Eiffel," Kepler corrects without looking, calm as ever.

Minkowski lunges forward and jams her gun against his mouth and snarls, "I told you to shut up. Do it before I make you."

Kepler holds up his hands in surrender. "But of course, sir. Working with zero information is a... unique command choice, but if sir has made a decision, I can but follow sir's wisdom."

She swallows and her gun falters for a moment, but her eyes never leave Kepler's face. "Eiffel, what's-- what's going on?"

"How in the three hundred and fifty-nine circles of hell am I supposed to know?!" he all but shrieks.

"You're not-- You don't--" Hera says, barely intelligible through the glitches and echoes. "You don't come back! You don't do that! You don't--"

"Hera!" Minkowski snaps. "Focus on keeping us in orbit. We'll-- We'll figure this out and keep you updated. Eiffel!" He startles and glances up at her, sees the way she's desperately trying to hold herself together. Her voice sinks into familiar biting sarcasm. "You could start by observing and then communicating your observations, unless it's too much to ask for you to carry out your basic job description--"

"She's--" He has to clear his throat. God, his hands are shaking so bad. "Like she's asleep, but... restless? Moving around a bit. Breathing normally. I think she--" and then his voice cuts off in a yelp as Lovelace's eyes fly open and she jerks upright, struggling out of the body bag.

Utter silence. She swivels around, taking in the cargo bay, glazing right over their faces without actually seeing a single one, and the brief flashes of her expression are just-- confused, pained, frantic, afraid, and all Eiffel can think of is the way she looked at him, chained in the armory of the Urania at his side with Kepler's gun pressed to her forehead. Wide eyes, but calm. Settled. The look of someone who's finally stopped running. She never got her revenge but she got her peace and now she doesn't even have that.

"Captain Lovelace...?" he whispers.

She jolts, meets his gaze for the briefest second, then turns away from him sharply and zeroes in on the gun in Minkowski's hands. "What in the..." Her voice is shaky, rough, but distinctly hers. "Fourier, what are you-- Why aren't you working on the-- Where is the-- Where am I? What just..."

"Lovelace!" Minkowski barks, clearly terrified, falling back on protocol as she always does when she doesn't know what else to do. "Get your head together!"

"Oh, now that's just insensitive," Kepler murmurs, and Minkowski actually pistol-whips him, the sharp crack of metal against jawbone doing nothing to fracture his obnoxiously congenial attitude.

"We need your help, Lovelace, wake up, we need you with us--"

"Where else am I going to be? Don't you take that tone with me, Fourier, I am still your commanding officer despite--" Lovelace cuts herself off, scanning the room rapidly once more, and the naked fear in her eyes tells Eiffel that she isn't... she isn't entirely here. "The hostages. Who...? Why are you, but I'm not-- I'll be right back."

And with that she's through the hatch, off like a shot. Minkowski jerks her head in the same direction. "Go after her! I've got these two."

He nods once and shoves himself through the hatch and calls, "Captain! Captain, wait!"

She doesn't, but the words freeze her for a split second, and that's all he needs to nearly catch up.

"You're not Sam," Lovelace says under her breath, brusque, tense, moving at a rapid clip down the hallway to the armory. "I don't have time for you. Fourier and Selberg are working triple overtime to finish the shuttle and you're not going to make me curl up in my bunk and cry like a little girl. If you were really Sam you wouldn't be trying this, you wouldn't be trying to weaken me like this. There's shit to get done, Sam. You can haunt me when we're all back on Earth so until then you stay out of my way and you stay out of my head." Her voice cracks under the strain. "If you were really Sam you'd be proud of the way I'm handling this. Staying focused, staying in control. Not checking out like I did when Fisher..."

A deep, ragged breath instead of an end to the sentence. The armory's hatch doesn't budge under her hands and she frowns at it. "Rhea, what kind of game are you playing? Open the door."

"I can't let you do that, Dave," he says, and it's really, really not funny. "Hera, lock down the armory. As securely as possible."

"Already done, Officer Eiffel." Subdued. Businesslike. She's... well, processing, for lack of a less punny word. No fight-or-flight to drown out her ability to productively think about what the hell just happened, no adrenaline making things messy. Eiffel can taste it, coppery on his tongue, his heart trying to pound its way out of his ribcage.

"Rhea, what is this? Rhea!" Lovelace hauls back and punches the armory as hard as possible, a deep, resounding clang that makes him jump, and then once more with a faint sickening crunch underneath, and there's blood on her knuckles, and she turns around and leans against the door with her eyes closed and an almost beatific look on her face.

"Oh. That's right," she says serenely. "Command took you too. Not in cruelty, not in wrath/The Reaper came that day. You liked Longfellow. I just liked Portal. Remember when I called you a companion cube and then the hot water just coincidentally crapped out every time I tried to shower for a week? I meant it as a compliment, Rhea! Mostly. A devil visited this gray path/And took the cube away and they took everyone else too and now I can't even get a door to work."

Eiffel moves close, afraid to actually touch her and take her by surprise. Unarmed, injured, recently dead, and he still has no doubts about who would come out on top in a fight. This... this weirdly candid way she's speaking, this otherworldly calm, though, is scarier than anything she's ever done. "Captain Lovelace...?"

"You're not Sam," Lovelace laughs, almost a sob. "Sam died too quickly to leave a trace. It came on in the middle of the night, and by the time Rhea got us awake you were twitching in a pool of your own--" She sobs, almost a choke. "Selberg tried his best, but when you've lost that much blood there's no bouncing back. All he could do in the end was try to make you comfortable." She chokes, almost a laugh. "Isn't that what we always tell people? We made him comfortable. It was quick. There was no pain, no fear. But I know that no matter what, there is always time for pain and fear. You know that too, now, don't you? I swore to myself after Fisher died that none of you would ever know that, and now all of you do."

Eiffel leans against the opposite wall and says, very quietly, "That's a promise that nobody can keep, Captain."

"You're not Sam," Lovelace whispers, eyes still shut, "but it's good to see you anyway, Sam. Can I talk to you for just a minute, Sam? I know you're not here, I know you'd disapprove if you were, but I promise I'll go back to my post in a minute, I will, Sam, I'm just so tired." She huffs out a weak attempt at a laugh. "Do you remember that one time Fisher and Fourier and I actually managed to con you into playing strip poker with us? See, most guys I would accuse of losing on purpose, but I think you are actually just that bad at cards. Two rounds, was it? three? before your scrawny ass was chewing us all out about codes of conduct this and dangerously unprofessional attitudes that and not an approved team-building exercise whatever, in nothing but regulation underwear and a single sock. I'll never forget the color you turned when I laid down my hand and told you to finish the job. You ran away, Sam, probably the first time in your life you'd ever defied a direct order. It was fucking hilarious. Didn't even take your clothes, just left them in the cargo bay. I don't think I've laughed that hard since."

They breathe in silence for a very long moment.

Lovelace opens her eyes, slowly, like it takes every ounce of energy she possesses, and she focuses on his face. Actually seeing him, not just looking through him. "Officer Eiffel," she says, calm and formal and resigned. "So you've come to haunt me, too? I'm afraid you'll have to get in line."

"I'm not--" He frowns. "Captain, I'm here."

"The shuttle exploded, Eiffel. Even if Minkowski and Hera weren't lying about radio contact with you after the bomb went off, it still pushed you out into deep space." Another weak laugh. "I pushed you out into deep space. It's been... months? A year? If I didn't kill you, I let you die, and that's even worse."

"You didn't, though. I survived the explosion. I survived what came after it, too." Her expression crumples, and Eiffel continues quickly, "I mean, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, I christened it the good ship Horrible Unending Nightmare for a reason, and like... the nightmares haven't ended but the Nightmare did, y'know? It's over. A tiny speck of radioactive space junk, floating in the void. I have fingernails again, and my hair grew back, and sometimes I can wake up in the morning without tasting cryo in the back of my throat! And all of that's because I'm alive." He takes a deep breath. "And I'm alive, in part, because of you."

"What?" So small and strangled it's barely a word.

"Jesus, Captain, what do you think kept me going all those whatever-hundred days?" A bit of a humorless laugh. "Something goes horribly wrong and it's Minkowski reciting Pryce & goddamn Carter in my head. I'm staring down the barrel of one hundred days of food and six thousand years of distance and you're there telling me to quit whining and survive already. Every time I wanted to give up, and it was, it was, it was a lot of times, I'd think of you and Minkowski and Hera holding things together with sheer stubbornness, and I'd think of the person you guys deserve to have out here with you, and I'd try to get within a light year of being that person. And it worked. I'm not dead."

He stretches a hand across the corridor, and she stares at it for a long second, and she reaches out cautious and trembling, and she gives a tiny sob and seizes it tight when their skin makes contact.

"You're not dead," Lovelace chokes out, gripping his hand even tighter, and wow okay semi-heroic speeches aside he hasn't magically stopped being a wimp and this is really starting to hurt. "Oh, God, that's right, you're not dead. We thought you were for months and there was no contact from Command and then you stepped out of the Douchebag Express looking like a fucking skeleton but you weren't and there's-- there's SI-5 and secrecy again and paranoia again and planning again and something went wrong, it went really wrong, Kepler was going to shoot you, Kepler-- he-- I--"

"I would love to fill you in on the details, Captain," Eiffel says with only the slightest manliest hint of strain, "the very second you stop grinding my bones to make your bread."

She laughs at that, nearly manic, and lets go of him to fold her arms over her chest. He rubs his palms together, casually stretching the one she crushed.

"Okay. Um. I'm not really sure how to say this, so, kind of stalling to be honest. Hera, can we get a quick status update?"

"Turbulence appears to have settled down for now," she says, sounding a bit more like herself. "Nothing else is really... happening? Commander Minkowski's still got a gun on Kepler and Kepler's still got his stupid smile and Jacobi kind of... looks like he's about to throw up, maybe. I'm pretty sure that's the face he's making? He's really hard to read."

Lovelace's expression snaps into focus. "Wait, where's Maxwell? She's the most dangerous--"

"Yyyeah." Eiffel hunches his shoulders. "Not... not anymore."

"Oh." She closes her eyes briefly. "I know you didn't want anyone to die, but--"

"It's--" a heavy swallow-- "fine, Captain."

She gives him a look, but lets the subject drop. "Anyone else?"

"Hilbert."

Lovelace blinks. "That man's a cockroach. Are you sure he's dead?"

"Well, Jacobi got to him with explosives and kept the comms open, so, yeah, we're pretty goddamn sure."

"God." She scrubs at the back of her neck. "This is... Please don't take this the wrong way, or tell anyone else, but I sort of... lose time, every now and then? But this is a lot of time. It's never been more than an hour before, I don't think, but now-- The last thing I remember is being chained up in the Urania's armory, and then I think I was in the Hephaestus cargo bay but everything's so hazy until a couple minutes ago when you were talking about the shuttle. What, um, what happened?"

Eiffel clears his throat and looks down at the floor. "Okay. Previously on the Mutiny Fuckup Power Hour: We get taken hostage by Jacobi and brought to Kepler in the Urania's armory. Maxwell messes with Hera and forces her to tell them Minkowski and Hilbert's position, but Hera manages to warn them and they get away from Jacobi into the air vents. Guess all that plant monster hunting was good for something, eh? They split up--Minkowski goes after Maxwell in the bridge, Hilbert goes after the napalm. Minkowski takes Maxwell hostage. Hilbert is... not so successful. They... they had the room bugged, and they knew about everything, and Jacobi packed the floor full of C-4 with a remote detonator. He wants Maxwell's release in exchange for Hilbert's life. Minkowski doesn't budge. Jacobi blows up Hilbert. Minkowski shoots Maxwell. Kepler demands her surrender. Minkowski and Hera put the ship in a decaying orbit. Kepler gives up because, crazy as he is, I guess he's not suicidal. So, uh, there we are. Bad guys handcuffed in the cargo bay. Good guys won. Yippee."

"Hm." She stares off into space for a short while, then looks back at him with a small frown. "You're leaving something out. Where was I during all this? Still with you and Kepler in the Urania's armory?"

"...Yeeeeees? Yes. That is where you were."

Lovelace narrows her eyes. "Officer Eiffel you are the worst liar I have ever met and I worked with Lambert for chrissakes. Tell me the truth."

"I did!" He hunches his shoulders even further.

"Eiffel..." she says warningly. When he doesn't respond, she cocks her head to the side. "Okay, then. What was I doing? What was I saying?"

"Um, a lot of really cool and badass stuff that made Kepler cry?"

"Eiffel I swear to God I will get a real answer if I have to rip it out of you with my bare hands--"

"Nothing, okay? You were doing nothing." He buries his face in his hands. "You were doing nothing because you got shot. That's why Minkowski took the napalm route. Kepler shot you and gave her an ultimatum."

"Wait, what?" Lovelace looks down at herself. "Where? I feel fine."

"Okay, I'm gonna need you to be really calm, and openminded, because I am absolutely telling the truth this time even though it sounds completely crazy--"

"Eiffel!"

"In the head. Point blank. I was right there." He screws his eyes shut. When nothing happens, he cracks them back open to see Lovelace staring at him flatly.

"That's not possible."

"Yeah, well, you know what else isn't possible?" he says with a bitter laugh. "Sentient plants forming their own religion. A red dwarf up and turning blue. Friggin' aliens beaming out classical music whenever they're not busy copying people's voices and memories. This star does nothing but redefine 'possible'."

"No, no, you must've... seen something different. There's no way I could--" Her voice cuts off abruptly, and he has to watch the horrified realization settle over her face.

"Yep." Eiffel tips his head back against the wall. "You were dead, Captain Lovelace, for hours. I got a... body bag out of the lab, put you in it myself. That's why we were all in the cargo bay. For your funeral. And then, ten minutes ago, you started gasping for breath. Kepler knows all about it, apparently, because of course he does."

There's a hand clamped over her mouth, and she's shaking her head slowly, and her eyes are wide and terrified. "No. You're wrong. I'm-- I'm normal. I feel normal. I've been back on the Hephaestus for two years, there's no way I could be--"

He shrugs and looks away. "The Jacobi outside the craft that one time sure sounded like he felt normal."

A sharp intake of breath. "Oh, God, you're right. You're being honest, God, I'm not even real--"

"No! No, stop that, that's not the point." Eiffel's eyes flick back to her, and he almost looks angry. "We already just lost you, we're not going to lose you again."

"If what you're saying is true, you never had me in the first place!" A little hysterical laugh bubbles up. "I-- Lovelace probably did die in the star, and then the--God, this is ridiculous--the aliens spat me back out for whatever goddamn reason. You've never even met Lovelace."

"I've met you." The tension makes him jittery. Every word has the potential to blow up in his face and he's never been good at this. "No matter what the hell Kepler says, you're-- I've been thinking, well, I am thinking right now because this is all happening really fast and it's just that-- You. The person three feet away from me. I met you when you stepped off your terrible duct-tape shuttle already planning eight steps ahead of the rest of us. When you were putting a ship made of cannibalized space station and righteous fury back together and making it work. When you were telling horrible jokes, and saving my life, and saving Minkowski's life. Beating Kepler at his own game. Keeping calm through every stupid crisis that pops up on this useless tin can. Whether you were born on Earth or space-Xeroxed two years ago doesn't matter. I know you."

"Nice speech and all, but you can't just--" Lovelace makes a frustrated abortive gesture before falling back, all her fear suddenly drained into exhaustion. "You have to be wondering why I'm here. Why they'd go through all the trouble of putting me together, putting my shuttle together, pushing me back to the Hephaestus. Sticking me in your midst while they've got this, this contact event thing planned. I doubt I'm meant to be a peace offering."

"Yeah, okay, it's suspicious." He fists his hands in his hair. "Maybe you're some... alien sleeper agent, and when the contact event happens you'll go full Winter Soldier on our asses. But you know what else? Maybe Kepler and Jacobi will get free somehow, shoot us all, and book it out of here on the Urania's secret luxury escape pod. Or maybe Minkowski will finally snap and Here's Johnny her way around the station til she accidentally chops through the hull. Or maybe Maxwell left some virus buried in Hera's code that'll turn her into GLaDOS and I know there's no friggin' cake on board so don't even try that."

"We do what we must because we can," Hera chirps on cue.

It earns a shadow of a smile from Lovelace. "I've always wondered about that. Isn't GLaDOS, like," she waves a hand, "offensive to the AI community? Misrepresentation or something. All of them, SHODAN and HAL-9000 and that guy from I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream?"

"Actually," Hera says, almost prim, "I always found GLaDOS somewhat inspiring."

"That's..." Eiffel tips his head back and stares upward. "Hera, you make our oxygen. Please don't say things like that."

The shadow stretches into a tired grin. "Did you have a point to your little spiel about how everyone could murder everyone else, or are you up the stream-of-consciousness without a paddle as usual?"

He jabs a finger at her. "Excuse me, Captain, but there is always a point to my communications. Almost like I'm an officer of them, or something. Actually, I have three points. Number one: there are bigger problems right now, and we never know what's going on, and we're always flying blind, and that hasn't--" He stops abruptly and frowns. "...Well, I was about to say 'that hasn't killed us yet,' but all three of us currently present have been dead before, so, uh."

"Flawless delivery, Officer," Lovelace says dryly. "I see now why you're the communications expert for this mission. What a stellar job you're doing! I hate myself for that pun."

"No, no, hold on, I can salvage this. We're here, aren't we? More or less intact. Despite all kinds of fingers in our brains," he points at the ceiling, "and friggin' drowning in outer space, and bloodthirsty mutant viruses, and being stranded on a nonfunctional craft for a period of time that my sanity has deleted out of self-preservation," he flattens his hand on his chest, and then sweeps it toward her, "and you! I've known you for two years and I was gone for like half that time and I've still witnessed you shrug off a mountain of shrapnel to the guts and a gunshot to the face! Captain Lovelace I have personally heard your heart stop twice and it's still beating. The universe has thrown every stupid death it can cook up at us and we. are. here. So what if you're... whatever you are. The situation hasn't changed. We still have to figure out what to do about the contact event and how to get back to Earth, first of all."

She squeezes her eyes shut. "Eiffel--"

"Still got two points to get through, please save all questions for the end of the presentation. Number two: you still eat and drink and sleep and feel things like you did before you popped out of a star in a magical girl transformation sequence on LSD or whatever the hell actually happened. And Hilbert operated on you pretty extensively due to the aforementioned shrapnel-in-guts incident. Wouldn't he have noticed if you were significantly different from a human being?"

"Counterpoint: I am significantly different from a human being in that you just watched me come back from the dead."

"Counter-counterpoint! That time when you dumped like twelve gallons of your own personal blood into my veins--"

"As opposed to what, my communal blood?"

"--and yet here I float, no telepathy or lasers shooting from my eyes or anything. Which, non-sarcastically, thanks, but also, sarcastically, thanks, because despite all the horrible Decima crap I am still thirteen years old and kind of want to be an X-Man. Blood transfusion by a secret alien is a much better superhero origin story than non-consensual medical experiments."

Lovelace buries her face in her hands, inhales, holds to a count of four, exhales. "Are you done?"

"Point number three!" Eiffel says loudly. "If there is anybody on this station who does not get to be the grand arbiter of the difference between a person and a thing, it's Colonel Goddamn Kepler. You think like Captain Lovelace. You act like Captain Lovelace. You remember being Captain Lovelace down to every tiny detail of, I don't know, the embarrassing thing that happened at your junior prom or whatever. Congratulations, you get to be Captain Lovelace now. Hera would've printed out your certificate but she's kind of busy keeping us from dying all the time. If your thoughts, your actions, your memories... If that's not what makes you you, what does?"

She's quiet for a minute. "I'm not gonna lie, being Captain Lovelace kind of sucks. Can I roll a different character?"

"Yeah, the backstory's a hell of a thing. On the plus side you've got the best stats by a mile and that was before your level-up bonus was revealed."

Lovelace snorts. "God, you're an idiot. How are you... How can you possibly be this chill about everything?"

"Oh, no no no no no, I'm not at all. I'm just so freaked out that it's looped back around to composure. You can fully expect a nervous breakdown in the next two to four business days."

"Well, at least we have that to look forward to." She drops the sarcasm and just looks at him, a little lost, a little vulnerable. "I'm. You can't ignore the fact that I'm not human."

"Okay, well," he rubs at the headache behind his eyes, "maybe that's true. But, like... the only thing that's gonna change is I'm more likely to hide behind you at sudden scary noises now."

"Eiffel, for God's sake, take this seriously," she snaps. "I could kill you."

"To be fair, Original Recipe Lovelace could probably have killed me too. I'm kind of the scrawny tech loser to the badass space commando thing you have going on."

"Eiffel--"

"I mean," Hera interrupts, slow and hesitant, "I'm not a human either, but I'm still... y'know, a person. An individual. A part of the crew. I think that's what he's trying to say? Maybe one day you'll kill us all but I've almost killed you all, like, a dozen times! Not to mention the fact that you've already tried to kill us all before. We got through that. We'll get through this."

Lovelace swallows and her hand goes to the spot on her arm where the dead-man's switch used to rest, an unconscious habit she seems to have picked up while Eiffel was off gallivanting through deep space. "I... okay," she says, taking a steadying breath. "Okay," she repeats, squaring her shoulders, gathering the pieces of her psyche and slotting them back into place til she's the same unstoppable force of nature that has held her position on this station for years despite every possible kind of turbulence. "Okay. If I walk back in there with a gun, Minkowski's gotta be jumpy enough to shoot on sight, and I'd rather not... test the limits of this regeneration-whatever more than I have to, yeah? So. Game plan?"

"Um." Eiffel ticks off on his fingers. "Give you a proper burial at sea, which has been taken off the docket for obvious reasons. Extract information from Kepler, filter out the bullshit which makes up at least 75% of what he's saying at any given moment so that should take way too long. Survive the contact event, which kind of sounds like it's about to start any second now. MacGyver the Urania back into flying shape. Get back to Earth. Kick Goddard Futuristics' ass--this'll be the climax of the third act, I'm thinking lots of cutting-edge laser guns and brutal hand-to-hand combat and Hera's got a super dramatic scene where she hacker-fights the evil AI at the center of the compound, it eats up most of our CGI budget but it's so worth it--and then we all walk away in slow motion as the building explodes and some really badass music plays. Then pizza? Definitely pizza at some point."

Lovelace gives him a look. "You're literally a child." He shrugs. "New game plan: don't die. It's a classic for a reason. Sound good, Hera?"

"I don't know, Captain, Eiffel's had me compiling a list of potential end credits songs for quite a while and I think I've got a pretty good set going..."

"Thank God someone's looking out for what's important," she says dryly, then heaves herself back towards the cargo bay. "Alright, kids, let's go. Time for me to meet my maker."

#wolf 359 #isabel lovelace #doug eiffel #hera AI #text posts #caladblog fics #title lifted from Ladder Song by Bright Eyes #aka Basically Lovelace's Entire Deal

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nellied-reviews · 4 years

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Discomforts, Pains and Irregularities Re-listen

Hello! I hope you're safe and well, wherever you are right now, and looking after yourself as best you can. It's a weird time to be alive, certainly. Fortunately, there is in this life one thing we can rely on: Douglas Eiffel will forever be a dumbass. I've hit episode 3 in my Wolf 359 re-listen, and boy, did this one cheer me up. So, without further ado:

Discomforts, Pains and Irregularities

In which Hilbert and Hera make a great but also terrifying team, Eiffel will do anything to avoid his physical exam, and Mink-oH MY GOD YOU WERE BEING SERIOUS?!

I feel, off the bat, like this episode is different to the previous two in a really good, productive way. It's a subtle thing, but it's something I definitely noticed this time round; Discomforts, Pains and Irregularities just works differently to the first two episodes. Where they were a sort of slice-of-life affair and a then a straight-up sitcom, this episode is more of a comedy horror movie; where the conflict in the first two episodes was between Eiffel and the rest of the crew, here we get our first external threat; where the plot, in the first two episodes, revolved around mundane, small things like radio broadcasts and toothpaste, the plot here's about a mutant space plant monster. It's a neat way of setting certain genre expectations and helping us triangulate, roughly, what we can and can't expect from the show, establishing a couple of constants (we're probably not going to get an episode, for example, with absolutely no comedy), but also a range of different tones the show can play with (sitcom, B-movie horror, weird sci-fi)

That said, it's not obvious from the beginning of the episode that we've stumbled into a horror movie. At first, when Eiffel starts his log sounding so very defeated, it seems like we're being set up for an episode about Eiffel trying to dodge a physical exam. Which you could get a whole, pretty decent episode out of it, for sure - it would probably end up following a very similar template to Little Revolución. Step 1: have Eiffel do something ridiculous. Step 2: escalate things. Step 3: Eiffel is defeated. Solid, right? So when Hera announced that physicals are coming up, it feels like there's a predictable way that this going to play out. Not bad, per se. But we can see where it might be going.

We do get the fun twist of Hera cooperating with Hilbert, and sounding surprisingly chipper about the whole affair. And I guess that makes sense? She doesn't have physical body in the same way as Eiffel and Minkowski do, after all, so she's not getting a physical, and I can totally see her making the most of it to troll Eiffel, or indulge in some Schadenfreude. Or perhaps she's just helping Hilbert because it’s her job. Who knows? Either way, it's nice, if a little bittersweet, to see Hera and Hilbert working as a team again and trusting each other; after season 1, we don't see so much of that, for obvious, murder-y reasons.

I also have to wonder, at this point, why Hilbert is running these physicals? He says it's to stop disease spreading, but surely the Hephaestus, a closed system with three actual people living there, has got to be disease-free, right? The only thing I can think is that this is actually part of his work on Eiffel, a convenient excuse to take samples and see how the Decima is doing. Which makes an already terrifying prospect even more frightening. I guess he also has to collect samples for Minkowski, to maintain his cover? Or - a more alarming thought that I kind of wish I hadn't had - he might also be taking measurements and samples in preparation for giving her Decima, should Eiffel go the way of Lambert and the last crew. Cheery stuff, you know?

That’s just me overthinking things, though. What we actually get, as the episode gets going, is a panicky, nervous Eiffel desperately bullshitting Hilbert to get the good doctor off his tail. Which is so very relatable. I feel you, Eiffel.

It didn't escape my attention, here, that Eiffel mentions a recent power outage. It's another sign that things were going wrong in the Hephaestus from the very beginning - something we won't get confirmed until Pan-Pan, I think?

It also didn't escape my attention, on a more immediate note, that Hilbert used up all of the water doing radiation experiments in the greenhouse. Which I bet is totally fine and totally didn't create the plant monster in the first place. Nope. Nuh-uh. No foreshadowing here.

In any case, Eiffel's ruse works, and then we get Eiffel and Hera just bantering for a bit, which is always a delight. Hera gets all sniffy (pun unintentional) about Eiffel's personal hygiene, Eiffel lobs a "you don't even have a nose anyway" back at her, she leans hard into her "well you're a feeble, puny human" shtick. It's fun, and I can totally buy that this might be a conversation they have had many times before. I don't know, I just really love their friendship, okay?

What I also love, when Minkowski calls to ask for help with the plant monster, is that Eiffel just straight-up assumes that she's also trying to get out of her physical. Like... has he met Minkowkski?! And yes, okay, technically she was in the greenhouses trying to avoid Hilbert. But the fact that now, when she is quite obviously not kidding, Eiffel decides to shrug it off? Genius. I love it. So very dumb.

Then, of course, we meet the plant monster, which is honestly one of my favourite things about this podcast. It's just so out-there! After two more slice-of-life episodes, it's delightfully weird, but also puts us firmly in the realm of soft science fiction. Like, there's no pretending, with a mutant plant monster, that this is going to be gritty, realistic, hard science fiction, and I kind of love that? Certainly, setting aside question like "is this scientifically plausible?" lets the show do all sorts of wacky, fun things that just make for a more engaging story. Mutant plant monsters are in the same cheesy B-movie vein as the Dear Listeners, super-soldier-creating viruses and mind control machines, and Wolf 359 is 100% better off for it.

Minkowski doesn't share my enthusiasm for the plant monster, sadly. She goes straight in with a flamethrower. Ah, Commander. Never change.

Eiffel still doesn't believe that it's real, even as he goes down to check on Minkowski, which is kind of hilarious, especially because it's such a tropey horror movie set-up. For such a pop-culture-savvy dude, he really dropped the ball on this one. But it's nice to see him and Minkowski bonding over being mutually freaked out by the thing. After two episodes of Minkowski being mad at Eiffel for various offences, it's cool that they're working together here, even if it takes the joint threat of Hilbert's physicals and a plant monster to get them there.

It's also here that the podcast format works so well, because without a visual on the monster, it's so much more frightening. Seriously, I bet all of our mental images of this thing are way more frightening than anything a TV show could give us, based just on Eiffel and Minkowski screaming.

Either way, we cut away pretty quickly after that, and the episode ends with Eiffel informing us smugly that the plant monster is still out there, but that, as a consequence of the ongoing monster situation, they have at least postponed physicals. It's a fun way to end the episode, anticlimactic in the funniest possible way, focusing on the dumb, mundane stuff and just dropping the plant mutant... for now. It leaves room for future stories featuring our resident not-so-horrifying monster (hello, Minkowski Commanding!). But honestly, it'd still be funny if the plant monster was never brought up again, and just hung round like the proverbial, vine-strewn elephant in the room. Which it kind of does, for a while, at least until Season 2.

It also works, I think, because this episode isn't really about how the crew would defeat a plant monster. Instead, the question the episode asks is just "How do the crew react when something really weird happens?" And the answer we get is something we'll see again and again: Minkowski goes on the warpath and tries to kill it with fire, while Eiffel is a bit more chill about things, possibly unwisely so. It feels like the blueprint for a whole lot of future disagreements where Minkowski generally leans towards more violent solutions, while Eiffel is a little more pacifistic, repping Team What's-Wrong-With-Handcuffs etc.

So yup. At the end of the day, like most of the early episodes, this one’s pretty heavy on the comedy. But it also establishes a bunch of new things that the show can do, and puts our protagonists into a totally new, strange situation, just to see how they react, paving the way for all sorts of future weirdness. Not bad, right?

Also, because it bears repeating, mutant space plant monster.

Miscellaneous thoughts:

Hera getting snarky about Eiffel's body odour bwahahahahahahaha

That noise is terrifying and will haunt my nightmares

Also, why did Eiffel record his physical six months ago? What could he possibly have been planning on doing with that recording??

"Tell him to go... ffffrequencies!"

Ewwwww spinal fluid samples

"Let's get this - oH MY GOD YOU WERE BEING SERIOUS"

"For God's sake, help me kill this thing!" "With what? Harsh language?" "With napalm, you moron!"

#wolf 359 #wolf359 #w359 #wolf 359 relisten #discomforts pains and irregularities #nellied reviews #introducing the plant monster #aka my not-so-small herbaceous child #I just really like the plant monster okay

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