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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"Because standing out and having everyone immediately able to clock me as a cyborg construct is...stressful. It does not feel safe."

Well, at least it's willing to be honest.

"Oh. That a shitty thing for you back home? Cyborgs don't get to sit at the cool kid's table?" He takes a drink of his own Coke, that's some good shit when it's hot and dusty outside. Taking a glance around the diner, eyeing the various people in the booths, "I don't think anyone here cares though, so best place to flaunt it."

"I am property, not a person. If I pretend to be human, I can do a lot more."

It shrugs. "Here...you're right, it doesn't matter. Everyone will expect me to be a person, either way."

"I'm property, doesn't make me not a person. Or I don't think it does anyway." His tone is a little unsure, Jacob would probably say he's a 'tool' not a person, but he's not here right now so fuck him.

"I'm Deputy Pratt by the way, didn't introduce myself last time we met."

"SecUnit or Rin. I don't care which, people use both." It's interesting to see a human call himself property. Murderbot doesn't know how to parse that At All.

"SecUnit sounds fancy and high tech. Which, I guess you kinda are super high tech, so it fits." He glances over at the jukebox as it changes songs, relaxing a bit as the next one comes on.

"Do the metal parts feel weird without skin?"

"There's more of the metal parts. It's the skin parts that feel weird."

Murderbot glances over at the jukebox, then back at Pratt. "What are you so nervous about?"

"Huh. Guess that makes sense, I was thinking of the metal like bones and having those exposed to air is not great."

He glances up at SecUnit (and up and up why is everyone so tall?), "Oh uh. Something really, really stupid. So I'm just gonna... go outside and stop testing my luck in here. It's gonna run out eventually."

Him and his Coke are just gonna go find a nice shady place outside and away from the speakers. SecUnit is welcome to follow.

Murderbot hesitates, but he totally does follow. Because clearly the human is agitated. It doesn't ask any nosy questions, though, just trails in Pratt's wake like a pretty blue shadow.

Pratt and his new swishy blue shadow head for one of the umbrella adorned tables. He's a lot more relaxed now that he's outside, his whole posture changing, actually looking at SecUnit when he talks instead of looking past him or at the floor.

"You know how to drive? Taken any of these out for a spin yet?" Gesturing to the cars in the lot and pointedly not expanding on why he wanted to be outside.

"I don't know how to operate these vehicles. I take it they don't have bot pilots for navigation like ships in my time do?"

That's alright, because at least it means none of them are going to be like ART.

"Nah, gotta drive them yourself. But that's most of the fun! Having some sort of autopilot takes all the good shit out of it. Being in control, only you and the open road." A nod over to someone peeling out on a dirt road, "Get to do fun shit like that too."

Murderbot considers for a moment, then looks back at Pratt.

"Show me?" No, it still doesn't want to drive, but clearly its companion knows how to and takes joy in it. Let's get him further from the diner.

He practically lights up, grinning in a way that's going to hurt his face, muscles so unused to making this expression.

"Yeah! Alright." He finishes his drink and stands up, "Pick a car you like. Any of 'em."

Considering the options, Murderbot eventually drifts toward a baby blue convertible of some sort. It's a car. It's a cute car. It doesn't know if this is a good car, at all, though.

"Nice, nice." He hops in without opening the door, clearly having done that hundreds of times. If he was approaching from the other side he might even slide across the hood all cool like.

There is a lot of downtime being a Deputy in Hope County and he may have wasted some of it practicing moves he saw on Miami Vice and Fast & Furious.

"Convertibles are fun, really get to feel the wind and all that." He revs the car to life, leaning to the side and adjusting all the mirrors.

Murderbot slides into the passenger seat more self-consciously, remembering when Dr. Mensah stopped letting it sit in the cargo bay of the survey team's skimmers. It certainly wouldn't be able to feel the wind in this vehicle's trunk.

"Are they safe?"

"Eh, kinda. This is the era before seatbelts so if we crash that would be bad. But I'm not gonna start doing donuts or anything if you don't want me to. And I haven't flipped a car yet - I'm a pretty decent driver."

Anyone who knows him would be shocked at that amount of humbleness because the truth is he's an awesome driver. Every crash he's been in here has been due to the tires giving out so they'll be fine if he's just driving around.

"What kind of cars do they have in your world?"

It doesn't really answer immediately, trying to figure out where to begin with that.

"I don't have a world?"

It doesn't have cars, either, but it feels like being manufactured on a space station comes before that. Right? Maybe.

Pratt will get the car moving, pulling out of the lot a lot more sedately than the normal speed demon tricks he's been pulling the past few days.

"You don't have a ... I mean you come from somewhere yeah? You're not from here right?"

"I was assembled on a space station in the Corporate Rim. Worlds are planets, right?"

It's just as confused as Pratt is, right now, to be honest.

"I kinda meant worlds as like... your reality? Timeline? I dunno. Like me and Sharky are from the same world, same place. But there's other people also from Earth, which is the same planet, but totally different world. I don't know what to call that. A different realm?"

He's not super knowledgeable about the multiverse, he died before that leg of the Marvel cinematic universe.

"Space station sounds rad tho? So spaceships and stuff instead of cars?"

"Transport ships, skimmers when you're on a planetary survey. Yeah. I've never really seen cars before, in person. And almost all vehicles I've known have had a bot pilot, an artificial intelligence doing the actual driving."

There's a bit of a smirk there.

"Some of the bot pilots are more sophisticated than others."

"So you just tell it where to go and it drives itself. I guess that's... useful. And optimized or whatever. But sorta boring." This guy would be trying to drive the spaceships with no training whatsoever. He played Halo: Reach, he's got this.

"Must be boring for the pilots too."

"Some of them are too simple to care. Others are complex enough to find entertainment. There's a research transport I know who's a complete and total asshole."

And that's perhaps the fondest tone Pratt has ever heard in Murderbot's voice.

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theweakhavepurpose - 2022-08-24 01:28 (UTC) - Expand

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