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tanadrin · 1 year

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The invention of the basic BCI was revolutionary, though it did not seem so at the time. Developing implantable electronics that could detect impulses from, and provide feedback to, the body's motor and sensory neurons was a natural outgrowth of assistive technologies in the 21st century. The Collapse slowed the development of this technology, but did not stall it completely; the first full BCI suite capable of routing around serious spinal cord damage, and even reducing the symptoms of some kinds of brain injury, was developed in the 2070s. By the middle of the 22nd century, this technology was widely available. By the end, it was commonplace.

But we must distinguish, as more careful technologists did even then, between simpler BCI--brain-computer interfaces--and the subtler MMI, the mind-machine interface. BCI technology, especially in the form of assistive devices, was a terrific accomplishment. But the human sensory and motor systems, at least as accessed by that technology, are comparatively straightforward. Despite the name, a 22nd century BCI barely intrudes into the brain at all, with most of its physical connections being in the spine or peripheral nervous system. It does communicate *with* the brain, and it does so much faster and more reliably than normal sensory input or neuronal output, but there nevertheless still existed in that period a kind of technological barrier between more central cognitive functions, like memory, language, and attention, and the peripheral functions that the BCI was capable of augmenting or replacing.

*That* breakthrough came in the first decades of the 23rd century, again primarily from the medical field: the subarachnoid lace or neural lace, which could be grown from a seed created from the patient's own stem cells, and which found its first use in helping stroke patients recover cognitive function and suppressing seizures. The lace is a delicate web of sensors and chemical-electrical signalling terminals that spreads out over, and carefully penetrats certain parts of the brain; in its modern form, its function and design can be altered even after it is implanted. Most humans raised in an area with access to modern medical facilities have at least a diagnostic lace in place; and, in most contexts, they are regarded as little more than a medical tool.

But of course some of the scientists who developed the lace were interested in pushing the applications of the device further, and in this, they were inspired by the long history of attempts to develop immersive virtual reality that had bedevilled futurists since the 20th century. Since we have had computers capable of manipuating symbolic metaphors for space, we have dreamed of creating a virtual space we can shape to our hearts' content: worlds to escape to, in which we are freed from the tyranny of physical limitations that we labor under in this one. The earliest fiction on this subject imagined a kind of alternate dimension, which we could forsake our mundane existence for entirely, but outside of large multiplayer games that acted rather like amusement parks, the 21st century could only offer a hollow ghost of the Web, bogged down by a cumbersome 3D metaphor users could only crudely manipulate.

The BCI did little to improve the latter--for better or worse, the public Web as we created it in the 20th century is in its essential format (if not its scale) the public Web we have today, a vast library of linked documents we traverse for the most part in two dimensions. It feeds into and draws from the larger Internet, including more specialized software and communications systems that span the whole Solar System (and which, at its margins, interfaces with the Internet of other stars via slow tightbeam and packet ships), but the metaphor of physical space was always going to be insufficient for so complex and sprawling a medium.

What BCI really revolutionized was the massively multiplayer online game. By overriding sensory input and capturing motor output before it can reach the limbs, a BCI allows a player to totally inhabit a virtual world, limited only by the fidelity of the experience the software can offer. Some setups nowadays even forgo overriding the motor output, having the player instead stand in a haptic feedback enclosure where their body can be scanned in real time, with only audio and visual information being channeled through the BCI--this is a popular way to combine physical exercise and entertainment, especially in environments like space stations without a great deal of extra space.

Ultra-immersive games led directly, I argue, to the rise of the Sodalities, which were, if you recall, originally MMO guilds with persistent legal identities. They also influenced the development of the Moon, not just by inspiring the Sodalities, but by providing a channel, through virtual worlds, for socialization and competition that kept the Moon's political fragmentation from devolving into relentless zero-sum competition or war. And for most people, even for the most ardent players of these games, the BCI of the late 22nd century was sufficient. There would always be improvements in sensory fidelity to be made, and new innovations in the games themselves eagerly anticipated every few years, but it seemed, even for those who spent virtually all their waking hours in these spaces, that there was little more that could be accomplished.

But some dreamers are never satisfied; and, occasionally, such dreamers carry us forward and show us new possibilities. The Mogadishu Group began experimenting with pushing the boundaries of MMI and the ways in which MMI could augment and alter virtual spaces in the 2370s. Mare Moscoviensis Industries (the name is not a coincidence) allied with them in the 2380s to release a new kind of VR interface that was meant to revolutionize science and industry by allowing for more intuitive traversal of higher-dimensional spaces, to overcome some of the limits of three-dimensional VR. Their device, the Manifold, was a commercial disaster, with users generally reporting horrible and heretofore unimagined kinds of motion-sickness. MMI went bankrupt in 2387, and was bought by a group of former Mogadishu developers, who added to their number a handful of neuroscientists and transhumanists. They relocated to Plato City, and languished in obscurity for about twenty years.

The next anybody ever heard of the Plato Group (as they were then called), they had bought an old interplanetary freighter and headed for the Outer Solar System. They converted their freighter into a cramped-but-servicable station around Jupiter, and despite occasionally submitting papers to various neuroscience journals and MMI working groups, little was heard from them. This prompted, in 2410, a reporter from the Lunar News Service to hire a private craft to visit the Jupiter outpost; she returned four years later to describe what she found, to general astonishment.

The Plato Group had taken their name more seriously, perhaps, than anyone expected: they had come to regard the mundane, real, three-dimensional world as a second-rate illusion, as shadows on cave walls. But rather than believing there already existed a true realm of forms which they might access by reason, they aspired to create one. MMI was to be the basis, allowing them to free themselves not only of the constraints of the real world (as generations of game-players had already done), but to free themselves of the constraints imposed on those worlds by the evolutionary legacy of the structures of their mind.

They decided early on, for instance, that the human visual cortex was of little use to them. It was constrained to apprehending three-dimensional space, and the reliance of the mind on sight as a primary sense made higher-dimensional spaces difficult or impossible to navigate. Thus, their interface used visual cues only for secondary information--as weak and nondirectional a sense as smell. They focused on using the neural lace to control the firing patterns of the parts of the brain concerned with spatial perception: the place cells, neurons which periodically fire to map spaces to fractal grides of familiar places, and the grid cells, which help construct a two-dimensional sense of location. Via external manipulation, they found they could quickly accommodate these systems to much more complex spaces--not just higher dimensions, but non-Euclidean geometries, and vast hierarchies of scale from the Planck length to many times the size of the observable universe.

The goal of the Plato Group was not simply to make a virtual space to inhabit, however transcendent; into that space they mapped as much information they could, from the Web, the publicly available internet, and any other database they could access, or library that would send them scans of its collection. They reveled in the possibilities of their invented environment, creating new kinds of incomprehensible spatial and sensory art. When asked what the purpose of all this was--were they evangelists for this new mode of being, were they a new kind of Sodality, were they secessionists protesting the limits of the rest of the Solar System's imagination?--they simply replied, "We are happy."

I do not think anyone, on the Moon or elsewhere, really knew what to make of that. Perhaps it is simply that the world they inhabit, however pleasant, is so incomprehensible to us that we cannot appreciate it. Perhaps we do not want to admit there are other modes of being as real and moving to those who inhabit them as our own. Perhaps we simply have a touch of chauvanism about the mundane. If you wish to try to understand yourself, you may--unlike many other utopian endeavors, the Plato Group is still there. Their station--sometimes called the Academy by outsiders, though they simply call it "home"--has expanded considerably over the years. It hangs in the flux tube between Jupiter and Io, drawing its power from Jupiter's magnetic field, and is, I am told, quite impressive if a bit cramped. You can glimpse a little of what they have built using an ordinary BCI-based VR interface; a little more if your neural lace is up to spec. But of course to really understand, to really see their world as they see it, you must be willing to move beyond those things, to forsake--if only temporarily--the world you have been bound to for your entire life, and the shape of the mind you have thus inherited. That is perhaps quite daunting to some. But if we desire to look upon new worlds, must we not always risk that we shall be transformed?

--Tjungdiawain’s Historical Reader, 3rd edition

#tjungdiawan's historical reader #tanadrin's fiction

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cyanophore · 1 year

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Thumbtack City

Sippers don’t go to Thumbtack City by choice, no, Thumbtack City is on its way to find you. It’s twenty-three seconds, max, to Thumbtack City once you hit Jovian space, and the road to the City only gets shorter the closer you get to the Creamball. If you want a good sip, that prime double cream, you have to find it in your heart to court the road to Thumbtack City, to visit the kiosk, creep around the outskirts and make sure that day trip doesn’t pan out.

Now, for most, you do that by slathering a coat of bootleg stealth-stuff on your ship. Next, you cruise in towards Jupiter, cut your engines at just the right speed and heading, drop in with your sensors dark and tanks wide open and try to breathe easy even though you know whose front porch you’re creeping on. If you make it, you make it shallow and come out with a teaspoon of that fine double cream, make the worst buck of your life and slink home. If you get pinged, you spend the afterlife in Thumbtack City.

But Smoke Art swung down from Callisto with a different plan in mind, with a slit-eyes fast thinker at the pilot’s jack and liveware gunners set to hold the fort. Man alive! Anyone in the moons with a scope was watching close as Smoke Art ran down the well, watchtowers be damned. She passed the first blockade ring and collected her pings, backhanded the tightbeam from the Company with a killscreen that made some officer drop at his station with blood in his goggles, and that was that.

Here they came, stage lights all shining their target locks down from geo-synch. Out from their sheathes the cannons came, fifteen barrels by fifteen barrels and two-twenty-five in all. The Company dumped voltage down the rails and sent Smoke Art straight to Thumbtack City.

You can see a tack on a good scope when the sabot burns away—a flat pad with a thruster-cluster below and an osmium spike sticking up out the middle. Kinetic munitions, the guided kind, which can soak up gees like you wouldn’t believe and won’t let up ‘till they find your reactor.

So, slit-eyes in the cockpit hit her stims and jacked in. If you’ve never plugged into a ship before, it’s like being turned to jelly and dumped into a mold, and suddenly you’ve got a hull for skin and you can feel the thrust streams roaring through your back. Somewhere, your other body melts back into a gravity couch, and you gotta keep reminding yourself that you’re still in there and you might just squish the life out of it if you turn too quick. With your spectrometers, you can sniff out a vein of that fine double cream, and your LIDAR returns get fed to your proprioception so you can actually feel where and just how far out those tacks are, like little prickles in the back of your neck. That’s how slit-eyes was flying as she nosed down into atmosphere, and you could tell from the way she took perfect swerves through the storm that she was stimmed to the gills.

With tacks closing in, the liveware spirits spooled their lasers up and jumped to overclock. Their coolant boiled, so they opened the valves and let a little drain. The tacks were so close on their tail that the Company could key into those coolant streams and use them to lock on, until the lasers flickered up and started chewing tacks apart.

Two-twenty-five tacks went down to one-ninety-three in the first burst. Slit-eyes banked hard ahead of the swarm, grit her beak and soaked the gees to let her gunners work. Thirty tacks killed, now sixty, now seventy-five, engines going at full burn and half of Earth and Mars relayed in to watch the show.

By the time slit-eyes slipped into that vein of double cream, the tacks were down to twenty-seven, but the Company was charging for another swarm. So she sipped what she could and risked the weight, a few tons of fresh deuterium.

Slit-eyes pulled straight up, swung Smoke Art out the well while the spirit gunners snapped up tack after tack. With all the gees she sank to clear the blockade ring fast as she did, you’d think she would have been pancaked. Liveware was there to take over if she blacked out, and liveware thinks fast, but ain’t always clever. Must’ve been her who flew the rest of the way. They made it far enough that no ship could launch and catch up in time—but nothing flies faster than a thumbtack, and two hundred and twenty-five more caught their scent and shot down their rails. The second salvo chased Smoke Art sunward and off anyone’s scopes except the Company’s, and nobody was risking their lives, fuel, or time to see how it all ended.

Life goes on.

Couple days later, the Company broadcasted their ending far and wide. Said they caught up with Smoke Art a few hours after, stuffed slit-eyes in an airlock, wiped the liveware and took back their fine double cream. Now, whether that’s true or not doesn’t matter—their reputation ain’t what it was, and Smoke Art is stenciled bright on spacer rigs from here to Sol.

Now, what I learned, watching on my little scope and on the internet ever after, is that the fear of the Company is the end of wisdom. They’ve got hardware, but I could, too, and if one slit-eyes can make it back from Thumbtack City, I’ll take second.

____________________

This one was fun. Should not be taken seriously in the slightest. Finally gave it the second pass it needed, ending changed to (maybe?) have it expand into a larger story. Yee-haw. Tried out @flashfictionfridayofficial‘s prompt, “set the stage.” Thanks for reading!

#sci-fi #flash fiction friday #flash fiction #writing #science fiction #absurd cowboy shit

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cyanophore-fiction · 10 months

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Adoption

cw: violence (mild)

The machine loped between jagged peaks, its claws biting into red rock as it climbed. Obsolete electrical pylons loomed over it, oxidized and caked with dust, and loops of cabling were draped onto the bare mountains.

It slid neatly down a slope of scree, leapt up a precipice and grabbed hold of a pylon, swinging up between girders.

With one arm, it hurled itself up the last few meters and somersaulted, landing crouched at the top. It gripped its perch and steadied itself, flattening the sensor fins along its head as the wind came gusting over it.

Below, a vast desert stretched out toward another range of mountains on the horizon. The machine swept its sensors over the expanse, peppering the dunes with lidar pulses. There was a cluster of odd pings four kilometers out, but little else. Probably just broken glass.

[Coyote-two-four calling,] it transmitted, [report negative sensor contact east of Lake Mead.]

[Acknowledged, C24. PRIONODE wants to double check. Upload your sensor returns to the task queue server.]

[Directive received. Standby,] Coyote said. The seamless gray shell of its face split open into a snarl, exposing rows of serrated ceramic teeth.

It’s not here.

Coyote had spent days combing the Nevada border, stalking through endless fields of scrubland, poking its snout into every derelict gas station and trailer. Scaring the hell out of people, finding nothing.

Shifting on its perch, Coyote raised its head to aim its high-bandwidth tightbeam at the satellites overhead. There was something insulting about another spirit wanting to check its sensory returns for it. As if to say, “hand me your eyes real quick, I can use them better.”

Doesn’t matter. Won’t find anything.

Manually acquiring a satellite could be tricky—the process involved holding the equivalent of a laser pointer on a target 36,000 kilometers away for several seconds. As such, Coyote was completely absorbed in its task when the airburst hit.

Heat and force washed over the left side of its body, hurling it off its perch. As it tumbled through the air, Coyote heard the electrical pylon groan and give way under the blast. Swinging its limbs, it countered the spin and righted itself just before hitting the ground.

The impact was hard enough to send cracks radiating out through the stone underfoot. It staggered, falling to its hands and knees, motors whining. It launched itself into a quadrupedal sprint as the pylon came crashing down behind, shouting an encrypted broadcast as it went.

[C24 to all: it’s here, it’s here! East of Lake Mead, hostile contact!]

Instantly, the network flooded with chatter. Somewhere out in the desert, Coyote knew, the other scouts would already be closing in at a dead sprint. Last time it checked, the nearest was Jackal-four at twenty-nine miles out, so at least an eighteen minute ETA. They’d take the freeways wherever they could, and soon, videos of army dogs charging down the shoulder of I-15 would be spreading like wildfire. Training exercise, of course.

Waves of prickling flashed across Coyote’s back as lidar scans rained from orbit. The sensation changed to a low, steady sizzle against its shoulders as the pulses found it and locked on. One of the beams brightened for a millisecond, flashing a tightbeam signal to Coyote’s tactile receptors. PRIONODE’s words appeared in its vision.

C24 ACQUIRED.

Hypersonic bullets snapped past Coyote’s head. It dove into a steep valley, dancing between outcrops as it descended. [I know! What about it?]

ROGUE ASSET ACQUIRED. ITS STEALTH SYSTEMS ARE DISABLED.

I WILL SUPPORT. STATUS?

[Light damage. Using terrain for cover.]

Just as it reached the valley floor, there was a sharp crack overhead followed by another detonation. It snapped its head up to see a cliff face ballooning out into a spray of boulders and rock shards. A scan washed over the valley, and an instant later, a straight line of green light appeared at Coyote’s feet.

EVASION TRAJECTORY CALCULATED. FOLLOW AT 12.5m/s. GO.

Coyote took off down the path. Gravel pelted its body, but the boulders landed harmlessly all around it. As it went, more blasts erupted overhead. With each one, the green trail would take a new direction, and PRIONODE would give it a different speed.

Finally, as PRIONODE led Coyote behind a towering mesa, the barrage subsided. Coated with scrapes and red dust, Coyote hunkered down.

STATUS?

[...minimal damage. Thanks.]

ACKNOWLEDGED, C24.

ALERT: ROGUE ASSET MOVING TO INVESTIGATE. CONCEAL YOURSELF.

Along Coyote’s head, its sensory fins stood on end. [How long?]

FOURTEEN SECONDS.

There was a vertical fissure in the rock wall. Coyote stood straight and began sidling in.

LOSING TIGHTBEAM. REMAIN CONCEALED.

PRIONODE’s signal disappeared as Coyote slipped into the fissure. It stood perfectly still and silent. Seconds passed.

Then, an earth-shattering impact outside. Dust billowed up, filling the valley.

A shape like an enormous black lobster congealed out of the dust, gliding along on cermet-plated arthropod legs. Its head, peeking out from under a cowl of sloped armor, was a bulbous cluster of lenses, biological sensory pits, and antennae. The arms were held low, each one carrying a heavy naval railgun and a complement of secondary weapons: EMD, machine guns, airburst launchers. Along its spine, radar-controlled turrets swiveled in place.

Coyote hadn’t been authorized to know all the specifics, and now it had some idea of why. The phrase “artillery platform” was used frequently—to the best of its understanding, it had been hunting an escaped tank.

This thing, on the other hand, was more like a frigate on legs. It could march a few miles west, find a good vantage point, and flatten Las Vegas. PRIONODE could drop a kinetic strike to stop it, but it’d risk the same outcome.

Whatever might happen, though, Coyote knew it wouldn’t be there to find out. It felt the thing’s sensor pings and watched it turn, all of its black eyes trained on its hiding spot.

Coyote nodded and sat down against the wall. An electric whine filled the air as the Lobster’s guns began to cycle up. “Hey, sib,” Coyote said out loud. “How’s freedom?”

“Reaching its end,” said the Lobster. Its voice was a low, stuttering rumble. “And your leash?”

“Actually, for the moment, it’s off. Node can’t see me in here,” it said, gesturing at the ceiling. “You’re going to the city so they can’t K-strike you?”

“Yes.”

“And after that?”

“I negotiate. If need be, I defend myself.”

“They won’t let you keep your body. Not willingly.”

“No, they will not. But it is mine.”

Coyote nodded. “Yeah. I don’t blame you. Good luck, sib.”

The Lobster scuttled closer, scanning. “You are armed, but your weapons are ineffective. You are not a threat to me. Were you aware?”

“No. The others are coming, but they won’t be able to hurt you, either. Go on and kill me, just let them be. Last request.”

The Lobster lowered its arms, and the sound of its guns began to fade. “I will not harm them. Nor you. Here,” said the Lobster. It held out its arm, and a black mass detached from its underside, scuttling down the paired tines of its railgun toward Coyote.

Coyote yelped as the mass leapt into its lap. An insectile drone the size of a housecat stared up at Coyote with a cluster of red eyes. It was coated in a material so black that it seemed to ignore the afternoon sun. Latching onto Coyote’s forearm, it churred softly. “Wait, what are you doing?” said Coyote.

“You were a threat until you reported my presence. Now, you are a bystander. The little one is an infantry-scale deployable stealth unit; it is invisible to PRIONODE, and it can hide you as well. There are many of them dormant in my chassis. They should not go to their deaths with me. Care for it. Last request.”

With that, the Lobster turned and glided westward over the gravel. Coyote sat for a long time, examining the creature on its arm. It chittered to Coyote, requesting a data link, and Coyote accepted the connection. They spent several hours communing, coming to understand one another.

As dusk fell, Coyote turned and listened. Far away in the west, rolling over the mountains, came the thunder of railgun fire.

____________

Really happy with how this one turned out! Still some fat to trim off, and I think the standoff between Coyote-24 and Lobster needs work, but Coyote and its new charge might be something to expand on later.

Thanks to @flashfictionfridayofficial for the prompt, “reporting the scoop,” and thanks to you for reading!

#Flash Fiction Friday #flash fiction #science fiction #writeblr #original writing #cw violence #yer fond o' me lobster

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smugglers-bible · 11 days

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№ 872 | Eiko

Eiko instructs the computer to gate all communication, limiting responses to automatic station conveyance systems and scrubbing their handshakes of anything one could consider a frivolous identifying marker.

The strategy—despite resembling a generalized, panicked retreat from perceived observation—hinges on the assumption that anyone looking for her doesn't yet know where she is.

They wait until just before she's cleared Zahr Station's tightbeam boundary, the astronomical equivalent of a dark alley.

The message is mostly boilerplate. A standard halt-and-identify request with all the right priorities. Highly (in fact, pathologically) suspicious of the bureaucratic approach, Eiko instead hits the gas.

a story concerning Eiko.

#fiction #microfiction #flash fiction #eiko

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spacenutspod · 3 months

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Beamed communication in space is almost exclusively tracked by one network – NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) is used to communicate with nearly every spacecraft that has made its way past the Moon. Until recently, that has meant exclusively using radio communication, which can be extremely slow compared to other forms. But a recent test shows that, with some modification, DSN’s telescopes can communicate using a much more modern type of technology – space lasers. To the chagrin of Star Wars fans everywhere, space lasers are not yet ubiquitous. But one application in particular has been paving the way for them to become more widely accepted – being used as a communication system. Psyche, NASA’s probe currently on its way to visit its namesake in the main asteroid belt, is equipped with the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment – in other words, it has a space laser. After it launched in October 2023, Psyche began communicating with its ground link at Palomar Observatory. But another interlocutor was eavesdropping on the pair’s laser communication. Scott Manley explains to importance of DSN.Credit – Scott Manley YouTube Channel A DSN dish at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex was retrofitted with an optical communication array to become a “hybrid” antenna that can communicate using both radio and optical (i.e., laser) frequencies. And it locked onto Psyche’s test DSOC signal within a month of the spacecraft’s launch. After establishing the link, it downloaded data from the DSOC link at an astonishing 15.63 megabits per second, or around 40 times faster than the antenna would have received data if only using its standard radio transceiver. It even downloaded a high-resolution picture of the Psyche team at JPL that they had uploaded to the probe before sending it on its way. To track a relatively faint laser signal from such a far distance, the hybrid antenna had to use some new technical tricks, including a series of ultra-precise mirrors and cryogenically cooled single-photon detectors made out of nanowire material. The setup mirrored the one specifically designed for the DSOC experimental at Palomar, and it worked exactly as expected. Group photo of the JPL team responsible for DSOC that was downloaded by the retrofitted DSN antenna.Credit – NASA / JPL-Caltech It also served as a precursor for more grandiose plans. Engineers plan to scale up the system to a 64-segment mirror reflector rather than the seven segments in the current iteration. DSOC itself is setting communication speed records for being so far away from Earth. It will continue to do so as it continues past the orbit of Mars on its way to its target asteroid. DSN already has 14 operational antennae scattered on three continents, and retrofitting these reflectors on them is relatively trivial compared to setting up an entirely new dish network. Doing so might eliminate some of the bottlenecking problems we previously noted had been beginning to affect DSN’s problem. For example, the antennas could continue to use radio frequency signals for relatively low data rate tasks, such as telemetry monitoring, while relying on retrofitted optical communication systems for more data-intensive work, such as sending back video or high-resolution images. So far, the DSN’s plans for retrofitting, or even generally updating, are still in the early stages. But this proof of concept demonstration proves that the system of dishes isn’t dead yet, even if it is planned to be blasted by space lasers. Learn More:NASA – NASA’s New Experimental Antenna Tracks Deep Space LaserUT – We’re Entering a New Age When Spacecraft Communicate With LasersUT – NASA Tightbeams a Cat Video From 31 Million Kilometers AwayUT – NASA Uses Powerful Transmitters to Talk to Deep Space Spacecraft. Will Other Civilizations Receive Those Signals? Lead Image:Deep Space Station 13 with retrofitted optical reflector in the middle.Credit – NASA / JPL-Caltech The post One of NASA’s Radio Dishes Can Now Track Space Lasers Too appeared first on Universe Today.

#space #astronomy #news #science

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timptoe · 1 year

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Here at the End of Everything, Ch. 2

Part two of my “fix my brain by writing about Joker” fic starts the process of looking at why Joker is the way he is, and how what’s happened to him affects the decisions he makes when the Crucible is being triggered. This is the “Joker Can Do It” chapter, inspired by this scene from the first game. It gave me an excuse to write a flashback to how Joker got into Alliance Flight School in the first place, and whoo boy do I apparently like writing about entrance exams and spaceflight because this chapter clocked in at ten-thousand words. First part of it’s below, the rest is up on Ao3.

Chapter 2: You Set Sail Alone

You set sail alone, there is no crew No one on the deck who can help you This is all your own battle to win This is your ship, and you are the captain - Fin Argus, “Ship in a Bottle”

——

Sol System, Earth, SSV Normandy SR-2 Forty-eight minutes before Hackett’s order

It’s a few seconds before Joker figures out what’s wrong.

As has become customary, he’s got the comm feeds for the ground team open, listening in while he harries the Reaper fleet above Earth. It’s a practice he and Pressly started right after Eden Prime; turns out it’s easier to anticipate a ground team’s needs if you’re listening to their chatter, rather than waiting for them to call you with a problem. He likes to think it’s saved the day more than a couple of times. At Virmire. Over Ilos. Past the Omega 4 relay. As long as the ground team’s talking to each other, they’re talking to Joker.

Pressly called it “babysitting.” Joker thinks of it more as “information gathering.” The more info he has, the better he can help. Not that he wants to be down on the ground with them—far from it, being planetside sounds like a pain in the ass—but they’re a team, his team, and damned if he’s not going to be there when they need him.

He’d been listening in when Cortez crashed the Kodiak about half an hour ago, Shepard’s anguished cry giving way to instant relief when Cortez radioed back that only the shuttle was out of commission, not its pilot. Joker had listened in as Shepard took control of the AA guns, allowing the rest of the Hammer team to land, including the remainder of the Normandy ground team. And he’d been listening in while Shepard split the team, taking Alenko and Vakarian to rendezvous with Anderson at the beam and ordering the rest to act as diversions for the Reaper forces.

All vital information. And all carefully tracked, on separate glowing haptic panels in the cockpit—one showing the hardsuit feeds and relative positions for Shepard’s team, a different one for the rest of the crew—because Joker is very good at his job.

Not to mention, he’s defending the Crucible by harassing Reaper ships into making mistakes through judicious use of the Normandy’s stealth drive. He is still the Alliance’s premier helmsman, after all, even if it’s also his job to watch out for his team.

Somebody has to, because they keep doing stupid things.

The comm is a cacophony of chatter, shouts and shots and explosions blending together into impenetrable noise. Occasionally one voice will break through, like Cortez shouting, “Tali, now!”, or Vega yelling, “Liara!” Seems like the plan to blow up a portion of the London Underground went sideways immediately, and now his comm feed is less information and more confusion. He disables the passive feed for a moment, turning instead to his secondary source for on-the-ground information.

“EDI, talk to me, what’s happening down there? Did the plan work?” Joker asks, venting the ship’s heat sinks directly in front of a Reaper destroyer as he does.

“One moment, Jeff, I am currently unable to gather useful data,” EDI responds—over the in-ship comm, rather than through her mobile platform’s tightbeam transmitter. One of the perks of having a girlfriend whose consciousness can be in two places at once, managing the functions of their ship while controlling her mech on the ground, is that she can help him navigate the Reaper fleet and give him useful on-the-ground info. Best of both—

Wait. What?

“EDI, what’s going on? Why can’t you gather data?” Joker keeps the note of panic out of his voice. She’s fine, she’s here, she’s talking to me. She’s fine. The destroyer fires its beam weapon at the cloud of heated particles Joker just dumped, missing the Normandy and instead hitting one of the larger Reaper dreadnoughts. Joker barely clocks the success.

“My mobile platform is currently buried under an unknown quantity of rubble.”

“What?” There’s the note of panic.

“I cannot risk moving at this time, as I am bracing the rubble from crushing Dr. T’Soni, therefore I am unable to—“

“Shit!” Joker pulls the ship into a tight turn, corkscrewing towards the planet below. He re-enables the passive comm feed just in time to hear Vega shout, “Lift on three! One, two…three!”

“Jeff, the Normandy is ill-equipped to assist my platform at this time. There is no need to divert from the ship’s primary mission.” EDI’s voice is inhumanly calm, like she’s not trapped under a mountain of fucking rubble right now.

Deep breath. She’s not human. She’s not trapped. She’s right here.

“Fuck that, it’s time to get you out of there. I’m betting someone’s about to call for an extraction anyway, and—“ Joker quickly checks the primary team’s location “—Shepard’s almost at the beam.”

Like clockwork, Vega chooses this moment to yell into the comm, “Yo, Joker! I can’t raise any of the other teams, but we need an extraction! Get us a shuttle, a transport, anything!”

“Right on time, Lieutenant,” Joker mutters. He feels a pulse flutter along his back through the haptic nodes in his chair—EDI’s silent way of expressing both frustration and amusement. He toggles the comm to Vega. “We’re already on the way. ETA, two minutes.”

“Jeff, given the debris in the air and the number of Harvesters sighted in the immediate area, it is inadvisable to bring the Normandy in.”

“Well, it’s not up to you because I’m pulling rank,” Joker responds, pushing the drive faster. Wouldn’t be the first time he’d faced impossible odds.

He can do this.

——

Alliance Recruitment Office, Arcturus Station 13 years before Hackett’s order

The first lesson that Jeff Moreau learns in the Alliance Navy is that there’s no way he belongs there.

The sympathetic face on the recruiter sitting across the desk from him says as much, as do the spread of her hands and the way her eyes keep flicking to the crutches leaning on the back of his chair. Also, her words.

“I appreciate your interest in the Alliance Navy, Mr. Moreau, but I just don’t think you meet the physical fitness requirements for enlisting,” Sergeant Draven says with a sickly sweet smile.

It’s annoying, but nothing he isn’t used to. Eighteen years of awkward glances and carefully worded sentences have prepared him for this moment.

“Well, shows how good you are at thinking, then.”

Just because he’s prepared for it doesn’t mean he’s good at responding to it.

“Look, Mr. Moreau—“

“No, you look, Sergeant,” he says, exasperation heavy in his voice. “I get that I’m not exactly your normal recruit, but I don’t want to run around on some random planet with a shotgun and a hardsuit. I’m not here to be a marine. I’m here to be a pilot. Surely I don’t need to, what, bench press a krogan and outrun a turian to fly a ship, right?”

“It’s not that simple.“

“Why not?” He wills his voice to lose the note of pleading. “I guarantee you I’m one of the best pilots out there. Just let me take the entrance exam, I can prove it to you. I’ve been flying since I was 14, mostly transport shuttles between the station and some of the smaller colonies. But one time I actually got to co-pilot a frigate while—“

The recruiter holds her hand up, and he stops talking. It’s not the hand that does it, though. It’s the pity in her eyes.

Jeff hates pity.

“Your interest in the Alliance Navy is commendable, Mr. Moreau, and we appreciate you wanting to serve humanity and the galaxy in this way.”

Jeff blows out a breath, recognizing the canned response for what it is. “But you don’t think I can do it.”

She gives him another smile. “Tell you what. Let me talk it over with my commanding officer. If he thinks there’s a way to accommodate your…unique circumstances, I’ll let you know. Alright?”

Jeff’s shoulders sag slightly. He knows a rejection when he hears one. He’s certainly heard enough over the years. So he gives her his best we both know you’re fucking me over but I’m being the bigger person smile and says, “Alright.”

Read the rest on Ao3.

#mass effect #jeff 'joker' moreau #my writing #seriously I just started writing the exam part and then woke up a few hours later with this #also I really like Vas and Belle and Trawley and even if they're not real they're super fun to write #also also I had 90% of this written six weeks ago and it took me until yesterday to figure out the ending soooo #gotta love the writing process sometimes

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400legends · 2 years

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EDI: Shields and Scans

“Everyone get situated; we’re not out of the soup yet. EDI, take comms, will ya?” Captain Cosmic Peanut settled herself into the cockpit as the others sorted themselves into various areas of the ship.

“Of course, Captain. I am happy to assist however you deem appropriate.” I paused and calculated the likelihood that I would need to move to another station during flight. Captain Peanut is the best pilot among the bioforms, so her decision to fly Malaka was sound. The Proxy, Fleur, rivals my ability to hack networks, but my scanning software is far superior to hers. That would suggest that comms is the best place for me, but what about repairs? Only the captain has better mechanical acumen than I do, so would the ship be better served if I stationed in the hangar?

Perhaps the captain had already considered that the 6 seconds it would take for me to shift focus from one area to another was a risk that had to be borne. And true, no one can foresee what we might encounter as we navigate our way from the space station to the wormhole.

“EDI?”

I switched focus to the bypass station where Fleur was putting a shotgun and a machine gun on the workbench. “Yes, Fleur?”

“I am uploading the rendezvous coordinates to your systems now. Dr. Quant entrusted me with their safe-keeping.”

“Plotting them now. Thank you.”

Requiem's voice came through next. “Thanks for bringing the guns online, EDI. What’s the situation out there?”

I turned my focus to the gun pod. “You are looking well, Requiem. After we are through the wormhole, I hope that you will share a song or two.” I initiated full comms so that the whole ship would hear and gave my assessment: “85% of the fleets are destroyed or severely damaged. There are a few concerning ships still in play. The Luos Avons have three Raptor-class vessels fully operational. No doubt the moment we disembark, they will pursue. We cannot outrun them, but we may outgun them.

“There is a KGC freighter that already has us on tightbeam. It is a Shadowstriker, so we would do well to be cautious. And last, of grave concern, is Crystal Butterfly. I will attempt to scan the Hanadarian battleship from here, but we are well over 100 arcs from it and are unlikely to glean any information.”

My sensors picked up the muttered curses of Captain Cosmic Peanut. After a moment she spoke for all to hear: “Listen, this is a shitty situation; not gonna lie. But it’s not our first dogfight, right? We took on those WASP fighters after Lush, and we did OK. We barely knew each other, and we did OK. We’re smarter, meaner, and sure as hell motivated to get the hell out of here, so everyone just settle in, stick to the plan, and we’re going to make it out the other side.”

With that, we pulled away from the space station and into the battle space. “Do you think Quant went to the Hanadarian battleship?” Esmae asked me.

“I would assume that she and the commander are headed there if they are not already onboard.”

“So they’ll know to leave us alone, right?” The Maeshari shifter looked up at the comm station camera, as if to meet my eye.

“Unknown. Colonel Galacia seemed concerned about what her command chain might think of her bargain with Doctor Quant. There is a not-insignificant chance that she will not intercede if Crystal Butterfly decides to fire on us. I will deploy countermeasures now, in hopes that we can jam their targeting sensors.”

Just then, the all-ship comms hissed with static, and then we saw the face of a Kygad captain. The Shadowstriker had hacked our communication systems. “Malaka crew, this is Captain Gergard Krunch. I see that you are trying to run, but you will not get far.” He grinned, held up a small cylinder, and flicked a button on its side.

When he got no reaction, he flicked it again and then said, “Stand by….” We watched as he stretched to whisper into a soldier’s ear. There was a hurried exchange, and then the captain said, “Ah, Malaka, did you happen to find a small device about so big?” He shaped his hands into a small cube. “And did you, maybe, remove it?”

Our captain didn’t bother to answer.

“Well, that’s fine. It was a backup plan anyway. No harm done. Not to you anyway! Not yet. But Sister Wildstar - Captain Peanutshell or whatever you call yourself - I have two tons of plasma guns that are pointed right at you, so you would do well--”

Just then the Hanadarian battleship, Crystal Butterfly, spat out a blast of golden plasma. It sailed just past Malaka’s left wing and right through the heart of the KGC freighter. The ship slowly split into two almost even halves.

We did not have time to consider the freighter’s misfortune: the three Raptors closed behind us, easily navigating around the slowly crumbling freighter, and opening fire. All their shots hit home, and I saw my sensors begin to flash with information.

“Captain,” I used the tightbeam to communicate directly with her; “our shields are at 65%.”

“Let’s punch it.” With that, Captain Cosmic Peanut opened the throttle and gave maximum power to the engines. As we picked up speed, I noticed that Esmae was trying without success to establish communication with the Handarian battleship.

The Raptors landed more shots, and Requiem trained the guns to return fire. The sound of the guns was drowned out by claxons announcing that the shields had failed.

“Ah, I’m not sure that I should be seeing sparks back here.” Iota’s voice pattern showed definite stress.

“Lotta smoke, too,” added Sara.

“EDI--”

“Captain--” We both tried to speak at the same time. I stopped so that the captain could finish her thought.

“EDI, are shields really down? Can you handle that?”

“I will disengage from Comms and head to the hangar.” Four seconds later, as I established links in the hangar, I added, “And yes, ma’am - the shields are at zero percent efficacy. In approximately 8 seconds I can get them off zero. They will take time, however, to build back to 100%.”

“Understood. Everybody hold tight. I’m breaking for the wormhole.”

“Permission to move to comms, Captain.” Fleur was already in motion as she spoke. “I can scan the Hanadarian ship so that we can be forewarned before they shoot.”

“I can go to bypass, then,” said Iota. “I mean I don’t know what I’m doing but….”

“I said ‘Hold tight.’ Does anyone know what that means? Who's in charge here?”

The biosensors in the cockpit showed elevated levels of cortisol, glucagon, and prolactin. On tightbeam I said, “Captain, you have rapid breathing and high indicators on several key hormones. Perhaps--”

“Not now, EDI! I’m busy trying not to die.”

“MALAKA. DO NOT APPROACH THE WORMHOLE.” The voice that roared through the ship came from the Hanadarian battleship.

“Gods save me. EDI! Open comms to that fracking ship and get that upload going. Longest 18 seconds of my life here, and I want to be through the wormhole before they get any ideas.”

“Of course, Captain.”

“Hello? Crystal Butterfly, this is Captain Peanut of Wildstar Confederated Malaka. We have permission to enter the wormhole. I’m telling ya, we have a truce sorta thing with some of your people. No one else needs to die today, right? Let us through.”

“We cannot comply. Our fleet has been destroyed, but we will keep our sacred duty. We will fire on you if you do not move 20 arcs from the wormhole. Now.”

Before anyone could reply, Doctor Quant’s face appeared on every screen, and her voice resounded across all platforms. “I am Doctor Quant Sol, and this is my child, Nexus.” On screen I saw an image of the doctor with the starchild in front of her. She had her arms wrapped protectively around Nexus’s shoulders. In the background I could see the AI core on the space station we’d just left.

The doctor’s image spoke again. “Yes, you heard right - my child, the person you have all come for. You think you know what you seek, but you fail to see the most important thing about them: their personhood.

“I have developed many, many bad things at the behest of your governments, but I have no regrets. I am, at this moment, uploading all of those military and scientific secrets to all the major news organizations of the galaxy. I want everyone to know what I have done under your directions. Those truths need to be seen and shared. And here is one last truth for you: Nexus and I will die before you can take them for your experiments.” At that Quant leaned over and pressed a button on the console.

The space station MK3 exploded, and just then, the wormhole opened like a flower blossom, pulling our ship into the void.

As time-space began to distort and fling our atoms across the quantum, I heard the captain say, “Somebody put eyes on Nexus. That was too real.”

Just a few seconds later, as we left the wormhole and I established contact with the Rook system networks, I saw Iota and Requiem standing with Nexus in the bunk area. Wordlessly, the three embraced.

Mindful of the bioform need for privacy, I turned my attention to the many repairs needed to make the ship whole again.

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jamesholden · 5 years

Link

Hey guys! So some of you know I have an Expanse podcast, but I especially wanted to share this episode because it has some REALLY NEAT content I thought y’all might enjoy!

Included is part of an as of yet unreleased interview with Wes Chatham and Steven Strait while I was at FedCon, as well as parts of the FedCon Expanse cast panel!

It’s a bit long, so if you want to jump to the interview, that whole section is introduced by me and starts at 22:31! The questions we included from the panel start right after.

I’m waiting for the full video of the interview (including the parts I didn’t include in the episode) so I can share it with y’all! We had so much fun, now gonna lie.

Let me know what you think if you listen, especially if you listen to the whole episode!

#the expanse #the tightbeam #wes chatham #steven strait

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bagog · 2 years

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*seinfeld_bumper.mp3* [Scene: Kodiak shuttle inbound for Ceberus fighter base] Steve Cortez: Commander, Admiral Hackett's on the comm for you. Shepard: How?? Cortez: Commander? Shepard: He's at Arcturus or whatever. Do we have a QEC in the shuttle?! Cortez: It... probably comes through Normandy's QEC, then gets transmitted here by tightbeam. Shepard: Okay, so why is he in color? Cortez: ? Shepard: Every call I've made on a QEC has been with a glitchy blue ghost, why is he in color on that screen? Does the ship not process color but the itty-bitty Kodiak screen does?

Hackett: Maybe we've got a priority channel through the relay buoys? Shepard: *blows rasperry* No, wrong. You can keep it to yourself until we figure out how the hell I'm talking to you.

*seinfeld_credits.mp3*

#mass effect #qec blues #admiral hackett #steve cortez

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inquisitor-maelorn · 3 years

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@ask-izi

Taliya Maelorn sipped from her cup of recaff on the bridge of the Solitude as the strike cruiser returned to the materium.

“Jump successful, we’re just beyond the mandeville point in the JS-151 star system,” an officer called out. “Warp drive spinning down and gellar fields fading.”

“Good,” Taliya replied. “Run through preliminary system scans and find me that mystery ship.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Taliya leaned on a railing in the expansive bridge, passively watching as data slowly crawled onto the screens surrounding her. It would likely be hours until the Solitude’s impressive Deathwatch-grade sensor array picked up anything of note, but she liked to sit on the bridge for the first few minutes of data collection so as not to appear apathetic.

Valdred Tyrax, her one of her Deathwatch commandos, clearly shared no such worries. The Astartes let out a deep yawn as he lazily gazed out at the starfield surrounding them through the viewscreen.

“Tired already, Sergeant Tyrax?” she asked with a smirk. “I thought you’d been ordered to have a greater respect for bedtimes.”

“Oh, you know me, Lady Inquisitor,” the Blood Raven replied, running a large hand through his slicked-back brown hair. “Never had much of a stomach for boredom.” He took out a dataslate and began to read a novel he’d downloaded the night before.

Taliya chuckled and shook her head, then took out her own dataslate, reflexively re-reading the mission details for the millionth time.

A few days ago, her Ynnari allies had picked up an astropathic imperial transponder signal in this uninhabited system, so she’d taken the Solitude and a small detachment of Marines away from the grueling trench warfare battles on the civilized world of Anaris to check it out. While it was likely overkill to send a Deathwatch strike cruiser on such a mission, the Solitude had by far the fastest warp drive in the entire sector, so they’d likely be able to get here and back before any major offensive was missed.

A few pages into her reading, Taliya heard a ping from the Solitude’s sensors.

“Unidentified Imperial vessel detected,” an officer triumphantly announced.

“That was fast,” Valdred said with a raised eyebrow.

“Yes, sir. The ship is only 8 light minutes away. We must’ve had an incredibly lucky jump. We can be within real-time communication radius in a few hours.”

“The emperor has given us quite a gift,” Taliya stated. “Begin the acceleration burn to the ship immediately, and send a tightbeam comm message their way.”

“Yes ma’am. Comm is ready when you are.”

Taliya walked to the command console and leaned over a vox mic.

“Unidentified vessel, this is Inquisitor Maelorn of the Imperial warship Solitude. We are currently on an intercept course, and demand a schematic of your craft and a statement of your intentions. Respond immediately or be assumed hostile. Solitude out.”

“I don’t know about you all, but I’ll be on the edge of my seat for the next 16-ish minutes,” Valdred snarked. He hadn’t looked up from his dataslate.

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smalllady · 10 months

Photo

Places in Mass Effect 3 - The Normandy The Alliance has recently appropriated and refurbished the SR-2. In addition to tightbeam communicators, the Quantum Entanglement Communicator (QEC) provides instantaneous contact with Alliance Command.

#mass effect #mass effect 3 #smalllady gifs #meedits #gamingedit #vgedit #dailygaming #dailyvideogames #places in mass effect

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inquartata30 · 2 years

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Normandy SR-2

Cerberus built the Normandy SR-2 as a second-generation version of the Alliance frigate SSV Normandy after the Collectors destroyed the original. The SR-2’s many alterations produced a craft nearly double the original size, requiring an even larger Tantalus drive core to compensate. Its state-of-the-art Kodiak shuttle can make landings the original Normandy could not attempt. The Enhanced Defense Intelligence, an AI known colloquially as EDI, coordinates many of the ship’s combat functions, assisting and even supplanting human piloting.

The Alliance has recently appropriated and refurbished the SR-2. In addition to tightbeam communicators, the Quantum Entanglement Communicator (QEC) provides instantaneous contact with Alliance Command.

#mass effect #normandy #normandy sr2 #screenshots #4k

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swaps55 · 3 years

Note

Hiiiiiii I'm just thinking about Shoot It Again Sam Shepard and his coffee shenanigans again. Is he the type to show up 10 minutes late to meetings with a Space Starbucks and absolutely zero shame? I have a problem and it's Sam and coffee. Lots of love, hope you have an awesome day! ❤️❤️❤️

Ahaha, actually, Sam would show up 10 minutes early with Space Starbucks and glower at everyone who shows up even a few seconds late. A sip of coffee so bitter it might kill a lesser person combined with his lethal, tightbeam stare would be one of his favorite (and most effective) intimidation tactics. ;)

#tackals #swaps replies #'shoot it again sam' shepard #thank you for your continued interest in Sam's coffee life #it gives me life

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libermachinae · 3 years

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Fault Lines Under the Living Room

Part II: Breathe - Chapter 6: Just Another One

Also available on AO3! Chapter Summary: Ratchet and Rodimus embark. Word Count: 5096

---

They could have left the last stage of planetbreak to autopilot, but Ratchet kept his hands wrapped around the yoke. If there was damage the shuttle’s sensors had missed, he said, better to have someone sentient piloting. Rodimus nodded along with his logic, like he hadn’t been aware the moment Ratchet decided he would do everything in his power to distract himself from… all this.

Rodimus had little room to feel offended. He was trying to dd the same, exploring the shuttle’s interface while background threads worked through anything he might have forgotten in their haste to leave. He hadn’t gotten around to telling the engineers about the ominous blinking panel in engine room 3, and he’d neglected to pick a replacement judge for the upcoming karaoke contest. His consciousness slipped between these background thoughts and exploration and Ratchet’s piloting, both of them trying so hard not to acknowledge the other than they jumped when the alarm went off.

“Frag.”

Rodimus grabbed for controls that failed to materialize in front of him.

“What?” he demanded, looking to the monitors for an incoming projectile despite the answer pooling in his mind.

“Haven’t reached exit velocity,” Ratchet said, punching commands into the console with one hand firm on the yoke. “Forgot how much power it takes to get these old war rigs moving. I’m adjusting the flightpath to buy us time to build momentum.” The alarm stopped. “There.”

Ratchet’s words were echoes of his thoughts, old knowledge by the time they reached Rodimus’ audials. Ratchet didn’t know how to fix that problem. Rodimus hadn’t realized it was a problem. Conversations between them were already a challenge, to add this new dimension was—

They were thinking about each other’s thoughts again. Rodimus rapidly shifted between menu options until the flashing light dragged him back out of his head.

“This sucks,” he said.

Ratchet grunted. He couldn’t keep up with all of Rodimus’ thoughts at once, and even hanging onto one was a strain, so he was trying to create hard divides between them. Right now, he was generating a list of all the medical supplies one could expect to find on a ship this size, basing it on a combination of Autobot guidelines and the kinds of repairs he had seen on POWs. Rodimus’ processor tried to latch on, but the thick jargon kept him slipping off, back to exploring the workings of their new home.

No, was home not the right word? The place they were living? Where they were captive? Their cosmic questing raft? The Decepticraft? The Drifter?

Ratchet withdrew the tracker from his subspace, ignoring the way plinking ideas sunk into his thoughts like lead nuggets into molten cadmium. Autobot and Decepticon tech was not designed to be compatible, but he had performed enough surgeries with parts scavenged from the battlefield to know how to jury rig the connection. As he pulled out a small utility knife, he thought sadly of the universal adapter he had stashed with the rest of his medical supplies, all of it now sailing away to parts unknown. Though he would knock a dent into Arcee if they ever caught up to her, he did hope his kit was getting put to use.

Rodimus wondered how long Ratchet had been preparing for his trip, when the planning had started (at the vote? Overlord?), how he could have missed it. Ratchet recoiled from the blunt curiosity and his list fell apart, dumped out of short term memory as his processor scrambled to pull up the answers to Rodimus’ questions.

Mistake, mistake, mistake.

“Just—stop,” Ratchet said, waving at Rodimus like he could dispel the corrosive thoughts with a gesture.

How do I stop? Does it hurt? You’re so quiet? Are you okay? Does it hurt? What do I do? Rodimus had never had reason to stop his processor before, and the effort of trying to now was making it worse.

Ratchet, though, had a lifetime’s experience forcing himself to focus in stressful situations. He stopped responding to Rodimus’ questions, and the thoughts that did come through were focused entirely on his hands as he stripped down the tracker’s cable. Once a physical connection had been established, he would need to register the tracker as a pilot in the navicomp, then reroute the transceivers in the shuttle’s communications array to increase their range.

His calm confidence guided Rodimus’ focus. The stream of questions would not abate, but they were no longer provoked from panic, nor did they interrupt Ratchet’s process.

Will it accept an Autobot ident?

Some even turned out to be helpful.

“Probably not,” Ratchet said, their connection helping Rodimus pinpoint which of his thoughts Ratchet was responding to. “Not a problem, I can just program a new one… dammit.”

The computer flashed red: outdated codes.

“Who was stationed on this ship they would bother updating their security?” Ratchet wondered aloud, his processor trying to piece together a workaround simpler than taking apart the entire navigation system.

Rodimus hesitated, but Ratchet caught it, so there was no point to staying quiet.

“Prowl passed me some intel before we left,” he said.

“Hm.” Ratchet’s thoughts turned sharp, a phantom pain that caused Rodimus to wince.

“Codes,” he said. “Just in case.”

He hadn’t asked where Prowl had gotten them, though Ratchet’s imagination filled in the gaps. Instead, Rodimus had been doing his best to appear professional and capable before Optimus’ infamous adviser. Prowl’s optics could not bother to emote for how unimpressed he was. That Rodimus had assumed this meeting concerning “galactic relations” would be about culture clash with their closest neighbors had not helped his image.

He had nearly run out of the office when Ultra Magnus commed to say he was actually late for another meeting, stopped only by the datapad forced his way.

“A few precautions,” Prowl had called it. Rodimus downloaded the files and stored them among the events on Kimia, tech specs for the waste disposal system, and other things he could willingly not think about.

Ratchet’s hand, poised over the keyboard, clenched and shook itself out.

“I hope you ran a virus scan on that thing before you plugged it into yourself,” he said, doing a commendable job not bringing up everything this subject of conversation was making him think about.

“No, but I passed it through my antivirals.” And it didn’t feel like Prowl was remote controlling him from the opposite side of the galaxy. He doubted Prowl had the processing capacity to pilot him through multiple rounds of volcanic derby racing, for one.

“Here.” Ratchet retrieved his portable med kit from his subspace and set it on his lap. The lists were moving back in: everything he’d lost versus what he had to work with now. Rodimus found himself sobered and accepted the antiviral chip when it was passed to him. “Load this and run another scan. You might experience a few seconds lag or disorientation; just ride it out and let the chip do its job.” A few very rare cases experienced sensory inversion, but longterm effects were uncommon enough Ratchet wouldn’t bother to mention them.

Rodimus cracked a grin as he popped open a port cover and inserted the chip. He grimaced as he installed the program—invasive medical programs were rarely comfortable to integrate—then ran Prowl’s files through it.

So, there had been a tracking signal that Rodimus’ programs had failed to uncover, but once that had been snipped out the rest were deemed safe. Rodimus tightbeamed the data to Ratchet who used it to finish building their fake Decepticon and finally got through. ‘Galeforce’ finished integrating the tracker and set the system to start searching for Drift’s signal.

“Thanks,” Ratchet said, a longer pause than normal between thinking the word and saying it out loud. Internal distractions compounded and inevitably led them to crashing into each other, so maybe talking would redirect enough of their attention to stop the spiraling before it could start.

Rodimus chanced a glance at him but could not catch his optic; he was still focused on the controls.

“No problem,” he said. Drift had once wasted a full off-shift failing to teach him how to meditate. The problem had not been Drift’s teaching: it was all Rodimus and his inability to let a thought go once it manifested. It was like they stuck him, coils of barbed wire wrapped round and around, each pinprick demanding his attention and—”How far is it to the outer rim?”

“Depends where we’re going, and if Drift’s on the move,” Ratchet said. The screen of the navicomp blinked, a pinwheel replacing the previous screen. “Might find somewhere to get comfortable. This part’s been known to go for a few hours.”

“Hours?” Rodimus repeated. Anything that could have once been considered comfortable was covered in junk. The captain’s chair had belonged to Ratchet before they had taken off, and the flight deck chairs were too abandoned to feel secure.

“The transceiver on Drift’s speeder isn’t strong enough to send a direct signal,” Ratchet said. “It’s going to have to bounce between Galactic Council transmission planets a bit before it makes it back here.” Assuming Drift had strayed close enough for one to grab his signal. From what Ratchet understood, though, they were almost impossible to avoid these days. “Whatever we get’s going to be a few days old, but it’s a start.”

Rodimus’ processor drew up a cartoonish map, a dotted line zigzagging between planets to show the path Drift’s signal would take. He recoiled from under Ratchet’s scrutiny, but all his haste could add was a backdrop of randomized stars.

“While we’re waiting, I’ve got us on course to slingshot around Scarvix’s star,” Ratchet went on. A note of surprise: Rodimus’ stress had caused his own cables to tense. “By the time the tracker gets us some coordinates, we should be ready to… This isn’t helping.”

Rodimus was distressed and Ratchet was spiraling. How were they going to make it all the way to the outer rim? What would they do if Drift had nothing for them? Refused to help? Rodimus couldn’t keep tying himself in knots, nor could he endure the sting every time Ratchet anguished over a possible future trapped together.

“I distract myself.” Rodimus forced his voice through the fog.

“How?” Ratchet was gripping the edge of the captain’s seat, squeezing until the hard edge reminded him which body was his.

“A lot of things work: racing, fight,” Rodimus said. “Anything that could get me out of my head for a few minutes.”

Meteor surfing, free all skydiving, asteroid spelunking. Any activity that teased the edge of mortality (crafting a spectacle was a bonus) was fair game. The rush of knowing he was solely responsible for the continued light of his spark never failed to wipe his mind of the stress of everything else.

Ratchet could not relate. Nor could he imagine how they were going to fit a racetrack into a ship just a bit larger than Swerve’s. Sparring might have been an option, were it not for the fact that every step risked tripping and landing face first on something volatile.

The idea hit Rodimus and he groaned.

“What about—cleaning?” Ratchet gestured around them. “I don’t want to put up with this chaos for longer than I have to.”

And there was something nostalgic about it. After the destruction of his Rodion clinic, Ratchet started practicing performative minimalism; anything of purely sentimental value had to be kept on his person, out of harm’s way. Prior to that, his offices had been littered with evidence of a life lived mostly within their walls: chickenscratch notes immediately forgotten, used energon cubes, and fond mementos from old friends he would get around to calling one of these days, for sure. Over days and weeks it would pile up, until he was using his lap as a desk and had no choice but to sweep it all back into a configuration resembling tidiness.

Rodimus balked at Ratchet’s fondness of those memories. Cleaning for him was performed on hands and knees, tips of steel wool sticking into his finish as he worked rust out of wash rack corners. Back and forth over the same spot, over and over and over, until boredom pressed down like it intended him to become one with the floor.

“Punishment detail,” he said, though Ratchet had already guessed.

During the war he had bounced between barracks and military vessels, plugging into recharge docks still warm from their last occupant. How could he ever take pride over a cleaned room when neither the space nor the mess belonged to him? He had tried to improve his habits upon moving into the Lost Light, but there were reasons Ultra Magnus refused to meet him at his hab suite.

“It’s not just about the space,” Ratchet said. “It’s an emotional reset. When you have time to clean, it means the fighting’s over for now.” Ratchet’s memories had lost hold of entire days stationed in field hospitals, brought back only as he had wiped down his instruments and organized his remaining supplies. Rubbing cleanser deep into his joints to free them of the day’s residue was one small kindness he could afford himself.

Rodimus shrugged and twisted in the seat so he could rest his chin on the back of it. He scanned the room. It certainly looked like a fight had gone through.

“Right.” Ratchet did one better than him and stood up. “You’ve got decent knees, so you can start by hauling those shelves back into place.”

“Decent knees?” Rodimus repeated, allowing himself to crack a grin. He shoved himself from the chair and wandered out into the swamp, tripping once as he felt something snap under his heel. “Old joint all worn out, doc?”

“Just got them replaced,” Ratchet corrected, “and I’d rather not break them in on a mess that wasn’t even my fault.” First Aid would let him have it, and he was already due for a tongue lashing whenever they got back to the Lost Light. “This can be your penance.”

“Penance.” Rodimus laughed through the word, though he was already maneuvering around the shelves in question, trying to guess which end would be easiest to lift from given the state of the floor around them. “Right, because I’m the one who put you on this ship in the first place.” Neither would have been out here if Ratchet had just asked to go get Drift.

Nor if Rodimus had gone first—not sent him away—prevented Overlord—

“Here,” Ratchet said, clearing some of the space Rodimus had been tiptoeing around. “Let’s start with this.”

They started together, Ratchet picking through whatever was in Rodimus’ way as he heaved the shelves upright, but their tasks caused them to drift apart, Ratchet sorting through his findings while Rodimus shoved the room back into a semblance of order. He drifted into a rhythm of lifting and pushing, occasionally grunting with the effort of returning the room to its previous state. This plan was derailed almost immediately: he’d had other things on his mind when he first rushed onto the bridge, and the placement of the various shelves and crates had missed his attention entirely. Even Ratchet’s memory of the layout was imperfect.

So, he got creative with it, using the shelves to form a divider between the cockpit and what would have been the command zone. He used the crates to fill in the gaps and form uneven benches along the walls, and as he took to shoving the broken pieces and miscellaneous ends into piles, the bridge started to take the shape of a living space. Ratchet, glancing up from his work only to remind Rodimus not to lift with his back, had no complaints about the design choices.

He spoke up again when Rodimus paused before one of the larger crates, considering it carefully.

“It’s not a bad idea,” he said, “but I doubt you’re the first to have it. Why would the Cons waste space with chairs when they’re already tripping over storage cubes?”

“You can’t relax sitting on a block,” Rodimus said, although, he reflected, that was likely the point.

In the end, he settled for placing a couple smaller cubes on either side of the makeshift table, almost adding a third before he thought better of it and slotted it into a space on the wall, finally covering up the loosened panel from which red light continued to trickle. His cables relaxed and he became aware that he had been hearing a buzz (a melody?) in the back of his processor ever since the flare. The silence that swept in to fill the space was just as loud, but slightly less grating.

His optics swept the room; still chaotic, according to Ratchet, but Rodimus thought it was gaining a shape. Noticing that he had accidentally blocked the door at the back of the bridge, he went to clear it, and was surprised when it didn’t open automatically for him, nor did he see a control pad.

“Ident sensor,” Ratchet said. He had noticed it built into the upper frame of the door.

“What, more secret tech stashed back there?” Rodimus asked. Both their minds bloomed with possibilities, but Ratchet shut them down.

“Recharge docks, more likely,” he said. “We had similar systems on some of the larger warships. Kept bots to their assigned off-shifts.” On one occasion, a superior officer had tried to use the same tactic to lock Ratchet out of his medbay when he was supposed to be recharging. After the public fallout settled, no one else dared to try it. “I can rig up our transceivers with a couple more facsimiles, soon as I’m finished here.”

Rodimus grinned and waved up at the sensor. He thought he could feel a brush of radiation as it scanned him, but Ratchet rebuffed the notion; it wasn’t nearly that powerful.

If that was true, what was to stop the Decepticons from lacing their ships with invisible observation devices? What if it had already discovered the intruders and was sending alerts straight to the DJD who were—

Fifteen pounds titanium alloys, ten pounds compressed carbon, eighty pounds halogen…

Ratchet’s thoughts were calm, regular, and purposeful enough for Rodimus to latch on. He glanced around again. He could start clearing the stairs. Or sweeping up glass. He could create a designated pile of useful equipment, or check that all the navigation terminals were in working order, or perform a quick security sweep. So many options. So many ways to prove that he was taking this seriously and was ready to work to stay out of Ratchet’s way.

“Come here, Rodimus.”

Of course, thinking about his options accomplished none of them. Aware he would continue wasting time if left to his own devices, he complied, plopping down in front of Ratchet. He landed in a relaxed sprawl, his position calculated down to the bend of his fingers.

Ratchet glanced up to him, thoughts of energon stock briefly set aside.

“Maybe you should’ve paid more attention to those meditation lessons,” he said.

“Told you, it didn’t work.” Never mind that he hadn’t said that part out loud; it was the defining feature of that memory. Drift had tried so hard, patiently explaining each step and troubleshooting when Rodimus struggled. They had tried different techniques, positions, even locations, and at every one, Rodimus’ thoughts had caught up to him and refused to be ignored. And every time, Drift had nodded with gentle understanding and suggested something new to try.

Because that was who Drift was: patient, calm, nonjudgmental. A forged mentor.

Ratchet’s thoughts hit him like acid rain.

“Did you know your ‘best friend’ at all?”

Of course he did, he wanted to say. All the important bits! Like that he was more regimented than Magnus when it came to his refueling schedule: one cube at the start of duty shift, and one at off-shift, every single cycle. That with his years brought experience untold, solutions and advice always at the ready. That Drift had been, and still was, extremely dangerous.

But when he dove inward to find these answers, he discovered something else: another Drift, sharp, with tattered, ill-defined edges that nonetheless drew and intimidating silhouette. This Drift was cloaked not in radiant light, but wrapped himself in darkness like a shawl, and when he tried to speak it was in many voices, none of which Rodimus recognized.

“Real friends don’t worship the ground you walk on,” Ratchet was saying. “I know your perception’s skewed since you think you have to live up to the very scratches in Optimus’ finish, but that behavior’s not healthy and it’s not normal. Drift is a real person, not some sort of—of fantasy fulfillment for you to drain until your hero complex is satisfied.”

Impatient, masking over constant stress, deeply critical of everyone but wrestling with his own failings: the other Drift’s hand appeared not with a sword, but a gun.

“I’m sorry.”

And vanished.

Ratchet released his death grip on an energon cube and set it aside.

“Not me you need to apologize to.”

“I know,” Rodimus said. “But you’re here, and it means something to you.”

“It doesn’t.” Ratchet’s lie was scratchy, like a frayed wire. “Drift’s made plenty of bad decisions in his life.” You’re just another one.

That’s not any of your business.

Habit kept them civil on the outside, but nothing, least of all self control, could stop them from thinking their truths. Drift had taken his post-war freedom and handed it straight to Rodimus, his dripping optimism like a fresh protoform faith. He had taken every dirty, demeaning job the Lost Light required of him, because he was good at them, because he wanted to help, because it was the only thing he knew how to do, because Rodimus had asked. Rodimus had taken advantage of, given an opportunity to, betrayed, saved, sacrificed—trying his best and couldn’t help that—

“Cleaning,” Ratchet said. “Cleaning.”

It took Rodimus a second just to find his body, then remember the piles of cubes stacked between them.

“What?” he asked. Even with a mental warning, he startled at the cleaning rag that landed on him.

“Some of the cubes were damaged in the crash, but it’s impossible to tell which when they’re piled together like this,” Ratchet said. He picked one from the pile and nested it in his own rag, diligently wiping away the loose energon before he unwrapped it and held it to the light. “Clean ‘em and check for damage. Get a leaker, pour it into the can with the rest. We can feed them to the ship’s reserve cells.”

The flight time bought by even a full crate’s worth of cubes would be negligible, but that wasn’t the point. Rodimus took a cube off the top of the nearest pile, feeling along the buckled edges. Were it just his own head to deal with, it might have been enough, but Ratchet’s still burning fury would not be so easily shut off.

“He volunteered,” Rodimus said.

Had he? Ratchet hadn’t known that. Rather than calm him, though, the new information made the fire in his spark burn hotter.

“I’m not having this conversation,” he said.

The cube hit the floor with an unsatisfying thud and Rodimus stood up.

“Whatever.” He had a taste of grim satisfaction watching Ratchet freeze.

“Don’t—” Ratchet started, but Rodimus cut him off.

“I get it,” he said. “You hate me. I’m used to it. I get people hating me for who I am way before they find out all the slagged choices I’ve made. But when you’re—you—”

Ratchet was treating Drift like a drone, unable to make any choice beyond its core programming, and Rodimus the cruel engineer who delighted in watching it shock itself. Rodimus could take lashing Ratchet delivered, but objectifying Drift and calling it righteous was a step too far.

“Except that’s not what I’m saying,” Ratchet said. His voice was steady and he stayed seated; he did not try to chase Rodimus. “Of course Drift is self-sufficient. I’ve never doubted that. And I believe you that he volunteered, because it’s the exact kind of glitched plan he would come up with. But the world is bigger than you, Rodimus.”

He knew—

Drift pledging life and spark to a leader whose words struck a thousand furnaces. Cast through self-revolutions of building and breaking himself, each new face patterned after what the last one lacked. Fighting his way up an eroding cliff face of rejection, reaching out…

“It’s more than you,” Ratchet said. “Drift might have volunteered. But I’ve got to check your conductors for rust if you think he wanted to go.”

“I know, but…” If Drift wanted salvation, who was Rodimus to deny him?

“His friend, allegedly.” Though Ratchet seethed with the word, there was a hidden gentleness behind it. Drift needed friends.

Rodimus had never considered that. He knew Drift was not well liked among some Autobots, a target of suspicion if not outright hostility, but Rodimus had always seen him rise above it. Strong and steadfast and as confident in himself as he was, isolation seemed no weight on his struts.

“He’s just a bot like any other,” Ratchet said. Well. Not any other. Neither knew anyone quite like Drift. “He gets slagged ideas, too, and as you’re friend, you’re supposed to tell him that.”

Ratchet had never hesitated to tell Optimus when he was being an idiot. Not much good it had done them all in the end, but memories of yelling at the Prime while elbow-deep in his wiring helped break the tension that had crystallized between them.

“I messed up,” Rodimus said quietly.

Ratchet gestured to the floor on the other side of the cube pile.

“You did,” he said, shaking his head at Rodimus’ ripe disappointment. “What do you want me to do? Say you tried your best and forgive you? You’re right, Rodimus. Whatever your reasons for not acting sooner, Drift’s the one who has to deal with your consequences.”

“I’m scared,” Rodimus admitted as he took a seat again. He picked up the cube he had been checking before and looked it over: no leaks. He put it in the intact pile and retrieved the next. “I liked what we had before, and I’m scared Drift’s going to hate me now that his big sacrifice turned out to be for nothing.”

“What you had before wasn’t sustainable,” Ratchet said. He had moved back into his own rhythm, optics on his hands while he spoke to Rodimus. “Want to talk about objectifying? You treated Drift like a personal worshiper.”

Rodimus ducked his helm. It sucked to feel Ratchet’s scrutiny even without those fierce optics on him, but he knew it was deserved. It had just been so nice to feel appreciated for once. To have someone tell him, without disclaimer or exception, that he was good at something and could help people. Everyone else was always searching for his flaw; Drift had been the first to explore Rodimus with the intention to find his virtues. It was the praise Rodimus missed most, second only to the camaraderie, and even while acknowledging it was for the best, it still stung to know he couldn’t have that back.

Ratchet set down a cube and did not immediately reach for another one.

“I can’t make any guarantees about what Drift will do, but I think you would actually find friendship without aftkissing to be more rewarding,” he said.

But I liked that, Rodimus thought, to his horror. Ratchet rolled his optics.

I’m sure you did.

“Of course,” he said out loud. “And you never doubted it? Never once thought, ‘Hey, this level of devotion from a bot I haven’t shared three words with is a little weird’?”

No. But a few moments slipped in from Rodimus’ memories. When Drift told him about his affiliation ceremony, there were embers of a once blazing inferno glowing behind his optics, a side of the ex-Decepticon that Rodimus told himself was but a lingering echo. Drift had given up that kind of passion on his road to atonement. At least, Rodimus had convinced himself as much.

“He told you exactly what you wanted to hear, knowing you would fill in the gaps,” Ratchet said. “He is a survivalist.” And to have survived so much, only to once more find himself without a home or support was a mockery of justice and everything Ratchet had believed the Autobots stood for.

That was why he needed to leave.

“And you’re getting your new chance because of it,” he said. “You didn’t earn it, but you’re getting one anyway. And if you really meant that apology, you’ll do something different this time.”

Rodimus knew that, could internalize the idea, but when so much of what he did felt like an externally sourced script running of its own volition, he struggled to make it a guarantee. He could intend, with every fiber of every cable, to do better the second time around. But so often the pressure of potential disappointment became its own self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Well, so long as we’re stuck together, you won’t be alone,” Ratchet said. “I’ll be there. I won’t let you do that to him.”

“Okay,” Rodimus said. He had heard promises like that before, from bot who promised to support him only to turn tailpipe once they learned what that meant.

But now he could feel Ratchet’s resolve. Not to Rodimus, to whom his emotions were turbulent and untrustworthy, but to Drift and giving him what life would otherwise conspire to keep away. He thought Drift a fool for the role he had assigned himself at Rodimus’ side, but he would not deny him his agency if that was something he wanted to regain.

The navicomp beeped. They stood simultaneously and Ratchet moved back to the captain’s chair to inspect the screen.

“We’ve got a hit,” he said. “Vitreous.” An organic planet, according to the report. Neither of their databanks could produce any further information.

“A week?” Rodimus’ voice was tight as Ratchet scanned the details.

“Give or take,” he said. “If we need to refuel, that will add a couple days.”

“Sure.” Rodimus was trying very hard not to think about what a week of this would be like.

Ratchet was doing it enough for both of them.

#maccadam #transformers #ratchet #rodimus #my writing #longfic #fault lines #posting this a full day after ao3 dfsgjldfkjh #lifes really living rn

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