insertmeathere | (no subject)

>[Look in the pantry]

Got it.

[Tex rummages in a general sort of fashion.]

[Instead of food, the pantry is filled with humming databanks, each marked with a Greek symbol and a faint humanoid outline. If this is where Delta liked to hang out, it must be where he's kept his memories of interactions with the other AIs. York doesn't seem panicked by this at all, not like he was earlier.]

>[Look at Alpha]
>[Look at Delta]
>[Look at Omega]
>[Back out]

>[Look at Alpha]

What did D remember about the Alpha?

Not much.

[And the databank is mostly empty, except with tiny snippets of information that Command had let slip at one time or another - Alpha was the original AI they were all made from, Alpha therefore had to be a fully formed smart AI, Alpha had been kept at Command for safety purposes for a long time, Alpha was probably male given how many of the splinter AIs were male.

After all, Delta had never actually met Alpha. Not that he remembered.]

>[Ask if York knows anything else about the Alpha]
>[Check out some of the other databanks]
>[Go back to the kitchen]
>[Stop poking around]

>[Check out some of the other databanks]

Huh. Looks like there's some others, too...bet his opinion of O'Malley wasn't that great.

You might be surprised. He kind of hated the guy, but only because I did. Really, he thinks of them all as brothers. Or sisters. Or whatever the hell the genderless ones count as.

[In fact, the first and most obvious memory of O'Malley is that incident that cost York most of the vision in his left eye. But again, York doesn't seem to be reacting emotionally - maybe because these aren't his memories.]

>[Ask how he still has Delta's memories]
>[Keep looking at the other databanks]
>[Poke around elsewhere]
>[Stop]

I'd go with 'siblings' for them. Guess we'll ask him about that when we find him.

[She heads out of the pantry and goes to poke at the cupboards instead.]

Yeah. [He likes the sound of that. When.

The cupboards are mostly bare, but there is the occasional nontraditional item - several grenades of various styles, a few clips of ammo, some holographic designs that don't make any immediate sense. Whatever Delta liked to cook in there, it wasn't food.]

>[Ask about the items]
>[Keep looking around the kitchen]
>[Go back into the main apartment]
>[Stop poking around]

>[Go back into the main apartment]

[She returns to the main portion of the apartment.]

I'm guessing it might be a good idea to stay still and not touch anything.

You could probably sit on the couch, if you wanted. [On one arm of the couch is an Xbox 360 controller. Yes, this means that York likes to pretend he's Master Chief sometimes.]

>[Try to turn on the Xbox]
>[Keep standing]
>[Tease York about Master Chief]
>[Poke at the bookshelf anyway]

>[Poke at the bookshelf anyway]

[Tex goes to poke through the bookshelf.]

Read any good books lately, York?

[There's a hefty Shakespeare collection with a bookmark, a few technical manuals, and an accidental trigger of a memory: Delta downloading some text files from a terminal in a city somewhere.]

Nope. Hurts to read, you know. Because of my eye.

>[What's that bookmark?]
>[Shakespeare?]
>[Right, the eye. Sorry.]
>[Tell him to read more]

>[Right, the eye. Sorry.]

...Right, the eye thing. Sorry.

What was the thing with D I just saw?

No problem.

That's...huh. Wonder why that was there. Something from a mission. The guy's encryption was based off a sonnet. You can never tell with these people sometime.

>[Ask about the sonnet]
>[Ask why he remembers that]
>[Keep poking around]
>[Stop]

>[Ask about the sonnet]

Maybe he was a Shakespeare fan, too. What sonnet?

Uhh...[He thinks about it, and the book of Shakespeare opens itself up to a page.]

I don't know, but it stuck in my head for some reason.

>[Read it]
>[Point a gun at the moving book]
>[Shrug and change the subject]
>[Make a crack about his memory]

>[Read it]

[She reads it.]

...'For thee and myself no quiet find'? Gee, that sounds familiar...

Life of a Freelancer, isn't it?

>[Agree]
>[Disagree]
>[Analyze it deeper]
>[Change the subject]

>[Agree]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

Then again, I guess if that guy was using it for encryption, there's a lot of people who think that way, huh?

Like this place. Do you guys get breaks, or is it pretty much all action, all the time?

>[Neverending hordes of zombies]
>[Breaks sometimes]
>[Depends who you talk to]
>[Mostly nothing followed by occasional bouts of activity]

>[Breaks sometimes]

We get breaks. Sometimes there's just a lot of sitting around watching space go by and waiting for pods to pop, and sometimes? It's fighting for our lives. The problem is you're never quite sure what it's gonna be.

So it's not that different from home, really.

>[Not really]
>[Yes it is, I never get to kill stuff]
>[Yes it is, no idiots from Blood Gulch. Except the one]
>[Change the subject]

>[Not really]

Not really. There's less idiocy here. ...Mostly.

If it's a good day.

Hey, any lowering of the overall idiocy level is okay by me. And at least you can laugh at the bad days once they're over?

>[Right]
>[And give away that I have a sense of humor?]
>[Wrong]
>[Only now that you're here]

>[Wrong]

Or, y'know, wish that you could strangle people for acting like morons and just get frustrated that you don't have real hands.