come_sailaway | AUGUST EVENT: DRAGSTRIP RIOT

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AUGUST EVENT: DRAGSTRIP RIOT

[it begins with a PA announcement on the morning of the 12th, Friday’s voice coming through clear and cheerful.]

Any passengers that wish to debark to our latest port of call can exit the ship through the metal detectors on deck zero! Please be advised that all alcohol will be confiscated prior to your exit!

[and whoever heads down to the lowest deck will find that what she said was true: there is a metal detector set up there, with Friday manning it. after placing all metal objects (including weapons, and all your weapons) onto the tray, she gestures for the passenger to step through the metal detector.

they exit in an entirely different location. suffering from a splitting headache, and wearing an entirely different outfit than they had put on this morning, but unscathed. they even got their weapons back!

the interior of the diner is essentially your average jonathan rockets establishment. the narrow lane between booths and counter is manned by an entirely mute Friday clone, who cheerily takes orders and serves up food (cooked??? somewhere???) with an almost unnatural talent for roller blading. there is a jukebox in the corner that can be fed with quarters passengers will inexplicably find on their person. the available songs range from the 50s to the 80s, with a particularly wide selection of songs from the platters.

outside, the diner is a great chrome boxcar, circled by a small parking lot. a large neon sign proclaims it to be GIL’S; it buzzes and flickers on and off often. passengers who have regained vehicles will find these vehicles parked outside. there are also a handful of midcentury American cars; none of them seem to require keys, and the gas tank seems set at full.

past the parking lot is a seemingly endless expanse of desert sand and scrubland, bisecting by the empty highway that the diner abuts. a few miles down this highway, the road forks into a smaller one, which winds its way up a steep, ragged mountain until plateauing into another parking lot, with only a small, old wooden fence between the cars and the edge of the cliff.

should they wish to return to the ship, passengers can leave at any time the same way they entered: walking through a doorway that now claims to be a mop closet. passing through will leave them on deck zero, again with a splitting headache. it’s probably fine.]

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Skulduggery has a car, and he has a new and vested interest in learning more about Rin's interests beyond "being a SecUnit" and, hopefully, "I have my entire favorite show embedded into my brain, let me tell you about it." (Not that he isn't moderately invested in eventually finding out some of the later-season plot points that Rin hadn't gone over...)

He steps out into the parking lot, key fob in hand, and spots the artist hard at work. At least the dress is liable to keep it cool while it sits around under the sun...

"It's a nice change of scenery, isn't it?"

Murderbot's sitting on the hood of one of the captain-provided cars (heavy enough to perhaps dent it a little, especially since there's nothing inside), and it turns to glance at Skulduggery.

"It reminds me of some planets where I've been before. And moons. It's...nice."

"Same here," Skulduggery offers. "A bit less clay in the soil, though." And fewer mad gods.

He stands to one side, leaning against the bumper while trying to keep the view undisturbed. "I didn't know that you drew," he remarks, audibly pleased to see it.

"The digestive system isn't the most invasive present I've received, believe it or not. I got twelves seasons of a show called 'The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross' dumped into my media storage, the same time as I got this journal and these pens."

Priorities: media storage matters more than guts.

"So I've been teaching myself, a little. I'm not very good."

"Oh." Good show, but terrible circumstances. Skulduggery's had things jammed into his own head recently, so he can relate to that trauma a bit more clearly than the dreaded digestive system. "Not the way Bob would probably want to be introduced..."

Still, he tilts his head to take in the current drawing. "Nor would that be what he'd say. I can see the scenery you're replicating," which is basically the most important part of drawing something. "Have you been up to the point? You can see the diner from there." Which might be a little more challenging to draw than straight-on shots of cars against flat nothing.

"I haven't been yet. I don't know how to pilot the vehicles that have been provided." Yes, it could walk, but that sort of walk alone feels...

...yes, yes its governor module is disabled and nothing stops it from walking off alone, but it still gets nervous when outside of range of ~~a client anyone else. Just nervous, that's all, not like it feels the phantom shock of its governor, which would be sharp enough to kill it if still active.~~

Skulduggery doesn't know enough about Rin's inner workings to truly understand why it wouldn't want to walk -- but there are plenty of other reasons not to try making the long trek out there by oneself.

"Ah! Well, you are in luck, then, aren't you? Not only can I pilot any of these vehicles, I was lucky enough to have been given my own."

Beep-beep! Which is the sound of the Bentley's alarm chirping as he lifts up the fob. "Would you want to go for a drive?"

"Can I ride in the cargo bay?" It glances at the trunk.

That's not a serious question. Well, it would be, if it thought there was any chance in hell that Skulduggery would say yes to it. The trunk could fit it, right? But no, it knows what is likely to be expected of it here. Passenger seat, like a whole-ass person.

Dr. Mensah never let it get away with riding cargo after learning it was truly sentient and rogue, either.

"I mean, you could..." Skulduggery tilts his head. "But I think you might prefer the view from the passenger seat."

He's absolutely not going to pop the trunk, even if it says that would be preferable. Unfortunately, yes, it's time to sit in the passenger seat, like the whole-ass person it is.

"Besides, I want to hear about your exploits with Bob Ross and there's no intercom back there. The bodies didn't seem to require it."

Ha ha ha. It's a fun joke, though he has absolutely 100% stored dead bodies in the trunk before.

There's an exasperated sigh from Murderbot, but fine, it moves to the passenger seat, because it knows it can't win that argument.

"There's no real exploits to speak of. Just...watching, trying to follow along, doing a few things on my own."

Skulduggery displays no reaction to the exasperation as he slides into the driver's seat, waiting until Rin settles into the seat before offering a teasing compromise.

"Tell you what; if you don't like it, you're free to curl up in the trunk on the way back." Not that he expects that to be the case, turning the key in the ignition and giving the pedal a light tap to rev the engine. "But until then, you can tell me what kind of scenery you like to follow along with."

"Uh. Coastlines. Oceans. Not like the one we're looking at on the ship, but real oceans. Living ones. With birds overhead and palm trees on the shore."

It almost sounds sheepish about this.

"I like the idea of beaches."

There are a lot of little ways to show personality, and Skulduggery finds it to be a fun sort of challenge to notice all the minor hints people give away. If he could figure out how to turn those data points into something definitive for Rin to understand... but that's far outside his capabilities.

"So you've never been to one before?" There's no judgment, just honest curiosity. They come from completely disparate realities; Skulduggery has no idea what sort of things Rin's seen. "I mean, before the Eterna."

“I don’t know. If I have, it was sometime before my last memory purge. But who knows, residuals in the organic brain might be part of why I like them. I’m not sure.”

Is that at all a helpful answer?

Not even a little!

"Ah, right." He knew about that, too. No real excuse other than his brain isn't the steel trap it used to be. "...Memory is a tricky thing. I wouldn't be surprised if there was something that they... missed. So to speak." Since he has no idea how the process actually works and honestly isn't too keen to learn the nasty details.

"But also, coastlines are just fantastically beautiful. Most nature tends to be."

"Most of my experience with it comes from planetary surveys, where I'm making sure a survey team doesn't eat or get eaten by nature on an unfamiliar world. Hostile fauna and so on."

Something in its expression softens a bit, a bit of a smile on its face.

Considering the amount of hostile fauna Skulduggery has experienced on (and off) Earth, he understands that job perfectly well. But the smile is nice, and he wants to encourage it.

"Oh?" he questions, mostly to goad it into talking more about itself.

"The last planetary survey I was on, I had to rescue the scientist doing soil samples from something very large, predatory and hungry. He retired from fieldwork after that project, for Some Reason."

There's almost a hint of something fond when it talks about that survey team.

Though there are cars gleaming far away down the road, Skulduggery doesn't expect to catch up with them as he tacks on speed. Everyone out here is mostly trying to go as fast as they can.

"I can't imagine why that would put him off!" He chuckles. "What's natural science without a few terrifying escapes from predators?"

"He was getting too old to run away. I had to carry him to get away, that last time. Talk to him to calm him down. That was, ah. When the rest of the survey team heard me talking to him, that was their first clue I was rogue."

Murderbot looks out the window as they go, instead of at Skulduggery.

Skulduggery hums thoughtfully. "Their first," he says, "But not what tipped them off?"

"When I chose to self-terminate when malicious code was injected into my programming, rather than killing all the humans, that really gave the game away. The one augmented human on the team went through everything thoroughly when he and Dr, Pin-Lee fucking cleaned my code and repaired me and realized my governor module was disabled."

Any SecUnit who wasn't rogue wouldn't have been able to shoot itself, as Murderbot had. And it had truly expected not to come back from that, after disobeying orders, acting out like that.

Skulduggery absorbs that information in contemplative silence. "I see," he says after a pause, followed by another, shorter one. "That's understandable. That they chose to repair you, I mean. ...People are uncomfortable with others sacrificing themselves, I think."

Murderbot lets that hang in the air for a long moment. When it finally speaks again, it almost sounds like it's...sulking? Defensive? It's not content with that, somehow.

"I don't feel like I deserve that."

No judgment, just curiosity. "Why is that?"

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cw: mention of a suicide attempt

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