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[puny-parker.livejournal.com]

Ten Years Later RP Meme!

That's right folks, it's now time to see how exactly Ten Years on the the Love Boat Good Ship Lollipop Gilligan's Island Stacy has gone by for your characters.

Comments

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Or shot out back," Howard says, only half-kidding. "Ugh, no way. She still has a ton of pods to go through before we have to deal with squealing brats."

Even all these years later, too many kids at once makes him uncomfortable. It reminds him too much of the FAYZ; those memories have only slightly faded in the last decade. "So what, you think Spacey Stacy wants to fight the war with crackbabies?"

[8wings.livejournal.com]

"Bismuth subsalicylate and stimulants," she muttered to herself. "Counteracting stomach upset and livening us up, but getting it all wrong." She frowned, and opened a database window. "Bismuth subsalicylate - bismuth subsalicylate - I'm wondering if it's the counteragent for something we don't know about. Has Science cracked open any interesting alien artifacts recently? Anyone break into a sealed tomb in the City and release a terrible curse?"

She's only half-kidding; over the years all sorts of threats have been uncovered on Stacy, many of them invisible to the AI herself. It would be just like her current pattern to start dosing the crew with something to repel giant flesh-eating slugs without telling them that hey, giant flesh-eating slugs were loose.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Nothing's showing up in the reports. If something happened, either someone's covering it up or they don't know about it. Or, you know, it's Stacy O'Clock again and something insane is about to happen that'll make us reconsider our role on the ship and blah blah blah." He grinds a knuckle into his forehead. "Of course, that's taking for granted that these readouts are correct. For all we know it's just saline and chalk and Stacy's corrupted the scanner again."

The most frustrating part of living on this ship is that they never feel like they're making any progress with the powers that be. Ten years later and they still aren't any more certain of their surroundings than they started.

[8wings.livejournal.com]

She was starting to run out of words, her eyelids drooping. She just wanted to get her data and go curl up in a corner with it, alone. But she poked herself back to here and now. She still had enough of a ghost of self-preservation to not want everyone she worked with on a daily basis to reject her.

"When was last podpop?" She couldn't remember. "Maybe a nutrient deficiency? Someone coming out who's allergic to us, or vice versa?"

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Two months. Nobody interesting, at least as far as I was concerned." He shakes his head. As always, way too many variables. Maybe if Stacy would actually give them useful information...but no. Medical hypothesizing is always them chasing their own tails more than anything.

"You look tired." It's not an insult or an olive branch, just a statement.

[8wings.livejournal.com]

She'd found out some time ago that discussing hwo this was all probably just a computer simulation rarely went well.

"Tired of - of flying in place." She gestured with one hand at the room around them, and the ship beyond that. "We make progress, and then fall back twice as far. We fix one thing, find two things, and four things break."

She dropped her head, slumping for a moment. "We don't even know where we are flying to." Had there ever been a war with the Ohm, or had the Daligig just forced them into preemptive attacks? Whenever someone seemed on the cusp of finding out something definite they died, or were injured badly enough to lose their memory, or were repodded. Everyone went away, or would go away. She got tired just trying to remember their names.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Yeah. Yeah. No shit. But you're taking it personally. What, did you expect that because Stacy plunked you into a snotpod ten years ago you didn't have to live the same dreary, futile existence as the rest of us?" He makes a derisive sound and sticks his feet up on the desk. "Don't let it get to you."

[8wings.livejournal.com]

She looked down her nose at him - not too far, she was only about three inches taller than he was. "Young man, I was living dreary and futile before it became fashionable," she said snottily, then went back to her normal tone. "I'd prefer dreary and futile and not changing everything at random every four months,thank you very much."

"The mercs could be very futile. Take the paycheck, win the battle, help the rebels, and then two years later you're hired back because the rebels who took over run the planet twice as badly as the previous bunch. I used to be better at putting it aside, that's all. 'We lost, massive casualties, nothing accomplished? Well, let's toast the dead and then go dancing.' Here I just can't seem to strike the right balance."

It didn't help that the funerals on Stacy weren't accompanied by a proper funeral feast.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Oh, so dreary, futile and boring! Sounds so much better." He's used to people posturing over him, so he doesn't show her any other reaction. "Yeah, it must suck to have picked up a conscience along the way."

He still never forgot her streams of formulas, mathematical abstractions of good and evil.

[8wings.livejournal.com]

"You'd choose tentacles randomly injecting you with this week's mystery formula to a little bordeom? Such a daredevil. Next thing I know, you and Zouichi will be running missions together again."

Zouichi being taller, stronger, and infinitely more battle-worthy than both of them - than both of them combined, for that matter.

"It's only a little conscience." She mimed rocking a baby in her arms, and then tossing it away over her shoulder. "Either you can have me realistic and depressed, or unrealistic and shrug-it-all-off. Your choice, Doctor."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Hey, what I like isn't on trial here. I'm just grilling you." He mock shudders. "I'm fine with never letting Stacy send me out to find some MacGuffin again. I've been electrocuted, half-drowned, attacked by wolves..."

Anwei's probably heard Howard's list of complaints nearly as many times as Zouichi has.

He can't help but smirk a little whenever someone calls him Doctor, teasing or no. He isn't actually a doctor, but he might as well be. "Well, give me an update if feeling sorry for yourself gets old. Last I checked Stacy makes fluoxetine compounds, not sure that'd work on you."

[8wings.livejournal.com]

"Is that what I smelled burning," she said, sniffing a little too obviously.

"I don't have any serotonin levels to tamper with. For me to reset my brain chemistry to optimum, I'd have to Take Time Off." She audibly capitalized those words. "And you know what happens when I try to train backup personnel - they get sick, they dissolve, they get eaten by invisible bears, they get run through GLaDOS until they forget everything...."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"The invisible bears weren't a laughing matter," he says with a face so straight that it's obvious he thinks the invisible bears were hysterical.

[8wings.livejournal.com]

She matched his straight face. The bears had been terrifying mysteries, until they caught someone and tore them apart. Then at least you could find them, by tracking the chewed gobbets of red meat that floated around the corridors, borne along in invisible stomachs.

"Stacy brought along invisible bears, kept them locked away and fed somewhere for who knows how long, and let them get loose and savage the crew rather than help us recapture them. And why? Because somehow, in that squishy green brain of hers, she knew that we'd have to negotiate a treaty with a species that worshipped bears, especially invisible bears, and most especially invisible bears that could perform the Sacred Ritual of the Ball and the Unicycle."

Ever try teaching an invisible bear to dance? Now, that had been hysterical - in the flailing-madness use of the word, not the humorous one.

kjladkjfldskjfdsds *chokes laughing*

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Flailing madness is hysterical in hindsight, though. Especially when you weren't the one armed with a bullwhip and a can of spraypaint trying to get those bears on those unicycles and tightropes. Howard can't help but snicker.

"Yeah, of all the practical jokes Spacey Stacy's played on us, that's one of the most memorable. Too bad we didn't get pictures." Since, you know, invisible. "Our lives are written by crazy people."

Re: kjladkjfldskjfdsds *chokes laughing*

[8wings.livejournal.com]

"And someday Howard, someday," she hunched her head into her shoulders and widened her eyes, wrinkles standing out around them like scars, "a door will open in Stacy, that will let us in instead of letting things out. It will let us access that secret core, that chamber of secrets, where those crazy people live."

Her voice dropped to a growl. "And then we'll get them."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

He shudders. "I can never tell if you're kidding about that or not."

Honestly, as irritated as he is by the circumstances of his life, Howard's aware that he dodged some major bullets compared to other people on the ship - and those who no longer are. Maybe he'd be fine with just smacking his writer in the shins with a tire iron rather than whatever Anwei plans for hers (he imagines it'd include using that mouth).

[8wings.livejournal.com]

What she had in mind for her writer involved a neural mapper, an uninterrupted supply of electricity and irrigation fluid, and time. Endless, pinful time.

She shook her head at him. "You can't open the door from inside the prison, I fear. No, we're just the dancing puppets, and Stacy's tentacles the strings. Someday those strings will slip, and we'll fall."

She sighed, fluttering her lips. "And then there'll be another podpop, and people to replace us, on and on and on. Pop, pop, poppoppoppop...."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Oh for god's sake. Just go slash your wrists already. Remember, it's down the block, not across the street." There's cynical and paranoid, and then there's Anwei's special brand of nihilism and despair.

[8wings.livejournal.com]

"Ah, but you see, for my god's sake I can't. I promised her an interesting death, someday. It will come for me, I'm certain. All I have to do is wait."

She blinked, picking up her medicalrobot and rubbing the sensor behind its head, making it scrabble and claw looking for a wound to suture. "Just wait here. Either death will find me, or Horanckk."

Then she beamed at nothingness. "Or - the war will end, and all our worlds will be remade, and we can all go home with all our new friends and live happily ever after!"

Her tone suggested she didn't believe a word of it.