A Flock Of Meme Gulls (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aflockofmemegulls) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
homemeless2013-02-22 08:55 pm
aflockofmemegulls) wrote in homemeless2013-02-22 08:55 pm
002 - The Stargazing Meme
the stargazing meme
oo1. comment with your characters
make sure to put names, series, & preferences somewhere!
you can use < ! > sans the spaces to make the comment "blank"
oo2. reply to others in character
oo3. use the rng and enter 1-10
oo4. play out what happens—anything goes!
oo5. profit? oh yeah!
one → meteor shower you just saw a falling star! and another! make a wish!
two → aliens what was that? was that really? omg no way a ufo!
three → lunar eclipse you've been sitting out for hours, waiting for this. it's so cool!
four → comet does it move fast or slow? either way, it's amazing.
five → full moon the moon is so huge! just don't look too long, it's really bright too.
six → star dust anything can happen in space. make up your own plot!
seven → solar eclipse this might be happening in the middle of the day!
eight → planet sighting is that a new star? nope, just a neighbor in the solar system!
nine → constellations do you know the stories behind these odd patterns?
ten → deep space normal stargazing isn't that much fun. you got a telescope!
I'M GLAD
That doesn't bother him in the slightest.]
I was just thinking about the way it influences the tides, that's all. If it gets too close, watch half of Asia go underwater—that sort of thing. I didn't read anything about it being at perigee tonight, though, so thanks for thinking ahead of me on that one.
[Maybe David didn't read it or hear it. Maybe he had something programmed in him so that he knew every movement the celestial bodies would have in the next thousand years. It didn't matter to Sam. He got his answer, it was an answer that made sense, and that was really all that mattered.]
Might freak some people out, that's all.
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so sam's response garners a smile, one that says that david understands that concern. because sure, if the moon gets too close, everything would actually fall apart. ]
Asia sinking would be cause for concern, wouldn't it.
[ if he sounds a little too pleased about this, it's because david's sense of humor (something he thinks he was given in error, since no one seems to enjoy it) is a little skewed. ]
Though I do think that the impending possibility of that happening would hardly be kept a secret, unless some people had an agenda.
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Of course, she had never known Sam, and he had never known her. But for what a clone's thoughts and false memories were worth, he was sure that Eve and the original Sam Bell were living well and not wanting for anything.
Other than Tess, of course.]
That doesn't sound like a very good agenda to have. [It's laced with amusement as he leans back, looking over at David in something akin to approval. Sam likes his sense of humor. Sam likes him in general, though he's well aware that some people wouldn't, no matter how much time they spent around him and had the ability to adjust to what he was; but David wasn't a what to Sam. He was a who. David had never treated him as a what, after all, so why would he think of him as that?] I mean, last I knew, China was still Communist, and they have a good chunk of land right next to the ocean, but on some sides...it would have to flood through India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam...that's a lot of collateral damage just to get at one country that puts people on edge. Vietnam's Communist too, though I don't think anyone worries about them much at all. Or even thinks of them, aside from...sweatshop stuff.
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but, in expert form, he prefaces his question with a quiet, mild: ]
May I ask you something?
[ a beat, and he asks the question anyway, because he knows from experience that sam will say 'yes'. he supposes that this is what people would consider a mutual understanding, and he's come to learn that it's what he can store in his memory as something 'pleasant'. ]
What year are you from?
[ there's a little pause here, as if to acknowledge that that question might be personal (the clone business, as he's made to understand, is a moral dilemma for humans). ]
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And after a while, he didn't know what he'd put on them. The little blips and "glitches" he'd seen in the video replies from Earth had always been blamed on transmission, or Tess not being pleased with the way she looked at one point or having to take a break and record after something came up. That there were people purposefully crafting them to look like suitable replies never occurred to him.
A lot had never occurred to him. It was why it was so much worse whenever he found out the truth. He didn't find it out over the course of months. He found it out in less than a day; and, in less than a day, Sam lost a life he thought was his and lost the one person he believed knew him better than anyone else. He found out the only person who knew him at all wasn't a person.
He found out he wasn't a person. When paired with someone like David, what reason would he have to deny him the basic, unalienable rights Sam had believed he had for three years? In what world would that be appropriate behavior at all?]
I. [He thinks his hesitation is answer enough, but he doesn't feel like leaving David with a one-word reply is proper. David is a lot of things; physic? Not so much. At least, not as far as he knows.] I don't know. I'm not sure, I don't know how long the other Sams lasted. I don't know—I know that my, that his daughter was fifteen when I...I mean, it's easy math, right?
I just haven't bothered to do it.
[It's easy.
He does it in his head in less than a second.
He just doesn't like the answer enough to say it out loud.]
Why?
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the point of it all is nebulous, and it brings david back to a charming smile and a man burning his own fingertips: 'the trick is not minding that it hurts'. lawrence of arabia. if words could resonate in his hollow, android core, david would think that peter o'toole has gotten the closest to finding out if androids can dream.
the trick is not minding that it hurts, but david knows that for humans, hurt is a fundamental component. he identifies it in sam when he asks the question, and when sam is stuck on a response. ]
Just curious.
[ his own retort is calm, even. ]
I suppose I wanted to know if our times ever overlapped. Not a very good reason to ask such a personal question.
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He hadn't treated him so well at the beginning. In the end, Gerty had been the only lifeline he had ever had. He hadn't seen the footage of incineration. He never knew that Gerty not only woke him up, but would burn his body completely when it was all said and done with. The dirt on the floor had confused him. He never thought to equate it with human ashes.]
I...suppose it was around 2044 or something like it. You gonna tell me you're from 400 and some odd, new acronym after it?
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Would it surprise you to hear that I'm from 2089?
[ maybe david could go find himself one of the gertys, they could have an interesting conversation about the evolution of technology. david's never heard of a gerty 3000, and he's never met the 7 davids that came before him-- he exists in an isolated bubble of perfect, humanoid models and complex machinery. ]
Not even half a century ahead of you.
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But by God, they had tried. They had tried so much so that they declared training and other, real people too much money for a simple job like mining on the moon.
They had tried, at least.]
It's not so surprising, if you're thinking it would be because of what you are. There could be, there could have been early models when I was on the moon. I can't be sure. Fifteen years doesn't seem like a long time, but we went from having to have clunky phones as landlines to super thin, useable by simple touch phones in that time, didn't we? It's not so unprecedented!
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but sam seems earnest about it-- it coincides with his knowledge of earnesty, and while david still has the inclination to think that he's better than a phone (obviously, that's indisputable), and that fifteen years is still a short amount of time to make a david8 (even if reality says otherwise), he's not made to feel angry. ]
Yes, I suppose that's true. My observations might have been slightly skewed in favor of how humans view time, and not to the speed of technological innovations.
That said, I have been told that I don't take up much space.
[ ...ok, but he's entitled to be a little sassy about this, right. the slogan is technological, intellectual, physical, emotional. ]
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He'd been asleep for something like twelve years. He'd been in a box in a shelf with so many more Sams that he hadn't bothered to count. He'd been tired and sick and hurt in heart, mind, body, and soul that he couldn't even be bothered to count how many were in a diagonal row and how many rows there seemed to be. He had figured it out and wanted it to end, and then he'd drove to see Earth for the one time in his life...
It wasn't meant as an insult. To Sam, fifteen years was a lifetime that he'd never have and had never been his in the first place. Fifteen years? Shit, Sam wouldn't know what to do with it.]
Probably because you're so skinny. You could...you could wedge yourself between a rock and a hard place and still have room. I don't think we can fatten you up any, can we? That's...I was always kind of skinny. The fattening up, that never worked. It just...no matter how much I ate, I stayed the same. Of course, I can't really say that without sounding, I don't know, like I'm bragging or something, but if you're naturally skinny, getting over that? Could be impossible.
But it's a good thing!
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by his own definitions, of course.
for david, 4 years on the prometheus with the crew in cryostasis is the equivalent of any 4 years in his given lifespan. he understands relativity, but doesn't experience it.
he also understands this discrepancy, which is the worst part.
but, well. sam always manages to make things a little less complicated, even though everything about the man is a mess of things that david can't quite put his fingers on. that's what makes sam indisputably a human to david. ]
Certainly. Making machinery that takes up extraneous space is something that went out of vogue many years ago.
[ self-deprecation? no. david curls his lips into a perfect half-smile. ]
As for you, Sam, no doubt your weight issues are the envy of many.
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He had a moon to mine, videos to watch, and a job to do.]
Yeah, there's lots of people who'd like to be skinnier. But. [He drops a hand to his stomach, grasping at what little fat there is on it.] If you don't eat enough, it makes you...you can get sick. Really sick.
Even if that food is crummy astronaut food. You can't always pick what you want to eat though, can you? At least, not in space.
[In space, no one can hear you scream for Chinese.]
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the fact that that thought occurs to him at all is a testament of an existing ego. why else would he bother riding bicycles and playing basketball if he didn't at least feel a modicum of pride in his ability to do so? ]
I'm not sure, Sam. I don't believe I've ever eaten anything but space food.
[ when someone doesn't have a frame of reference, someone can't make an accurate assessment. david looks up at the moon, the fickle, ever-changing celestial body, and muses upon its closeness to the world. ]
But distance makes the heart fonder for the things you don't have, doesn't it?
[ he doesn't actually understand this concept, but longing is programmed intimately into his AI. ]
Does it make you bitter? The moon, I mean.
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Or himself, really; he liked being slender, even if he occasionally had to put some effort into it. He may not have had killer abs, but he had what was needed for his job. He had what he'd had when he left Earth, or so he thought. He was fine with his body.]
Why would it make me bitter? [It's an honest question. He sees where one might think that, but Sam can't really hold it against the moon, of all things.] It didn't do anything. It just had, it had what we needed. It didn't, it wasn't something that was out to get me, or whatever you'd call it. It's not the moon's fault. It's the people, it's the industry. The heads in charge. I don't know, maybe the economy. The prices of training, of shooting off what they'd need, it's got nothing to do with the moon. I mean, I lived there. I know there weren't spies on it, running around, making sure I never knew the truth.
It's just the moon. Being the moon. That's not its fault. I'm not...it's always been there and always will be. No reason to get bitter at it. I'm not a werewolf or anything.
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david 'likes' sam. he folds his hands behind the small of his back in a perfect posture of attention, fingers linked and palms pushed together. there's no pulse, but if there were, it would be calm and steady. david is 'at ease'. ]
I'm glad to hear that it doesn't upset you.
[ spoken more to himself than anyone else, but david turns his head, fixes sam with a congeniality that he's practiced for occasions like these. ]
I understand that it's not easy to refrain from projecting one's insecurities onto someone-- or something--else. Though I also understand that doing so seldom makes things 'easier'.
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He's seen as David. And Sam? He likes David. He thinks he's well-spoken, well-mannered, and a good companion on a level that Sam can't really remember experiencing before.
He remembers the original Sam's studies and classes, the knowledge need to run Sarang properly, engineering and the path of the stars and skies. He doesn't remember friends. Maybe it was the radiation. Maybe it was the "crash" before he was awoken. Maybe it was easier to keep a man running along if all he had in the world to think about was a wife who loved him and a daughter who was waiting for her daddy, the astronaut.
He doesn't know much about humanity. He knows about inhumanity. He knows that people can be evil and foul, all in the name of pinching pennies while they tell the world they're doing great things to keep Earth at the pinnacle of properly functioning.
He knows that David is artificial. He knows that David is also, in fact, human in ways other people might overlook, if only out of spite or prejudice or ignorance.
Perhaps, due to Sam's issues with the most evil of people never met and yet who decided his life, it's easy for him to overlook David's robotic nature. Maybe it has something to do with the presence of a GERTY 3000 he grew to call by name instead of model, something to do with Gerty being the only friend he ever actually had. Maybe it speaks to Sam being unable to be a proper human, if only because he hasn't been as socialized as he "remembers" himself to be.
But he does like David.]
I don't think it's easy. You know, for people, because...there's all sorts of things that happen when you're growing up that can impair inference on every level. It's not...I can't speak for everyone, obviously. But, ah. David, how do you feel about that sort of thing? It's—it's okay to talk about it. I promise I won't write a scalding complaint about you to Dad.
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Do you want my thoughts on projecting?
[ he shifts, distributing his weight perfectly from one foot to the other, assessing the height of the moon and its gravitational pull. celestial bodies, much like the extraterrestrials that he encountered, are absolute. perfect.
but maybe he's just projecting. it's a strangely relevant train of thought. ]
Well, if you promise to keep it confidential.
[ a little tug at the corner of his lips, a slight narrowing of his eyes, as if he's confiding. ]
I believe Peter Weyland may have been compensating for something when he created me.
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If David wants to sit, that's fine. Sam's not going to make a big deal of it. From what he's seen, David tends to mimic people out of...well, he can only assume it's because he believes it makes them more comfortable. Like with drinking a beer. But if David wants to stand, Sam's not going to be uncomfortable with it. Sam just likes the ground.
One day, he hopes to be buried under it. Whole and with all the teeth he's got left as in tact as they can be, bald if he gets to be it. But he'd like to meet his end underneath it as opposed to...whatever happened to the bodies of the other clones whenever they got into that pod.]
You mean that Weyland wasn't a perfect, handsome, blond-haired, blue-eyed fellow? You think he might have been wanting to look like you? I would never have guessed that, not at all.
[It's sarcastic. The men Sam knows of who look like David got contracts for movies or were models for fashion. One doesn't go out to the grocery store, usually, and see men like David.
Of course, Sam being who and what he is, he never went to the grocery store. Or the movies. Or looked through a fashion magazine. But he knows of them, at least. It's all he has to work with.]
OH MY GOD i never got a notif for this??? DW please
Objectively speaking, he was a good-looking man.
[ and there's a little pauses here, as if david is evaluating whether or not this is appropriate or within his jurisdiction to say-- though he doesn't know why he bothers, considering that he was there when weyland met his fate. force of habit, he supposes. in his wiring. ]
And then he got old.
[ sick burn. ]
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdjju3LvSZ1qfyepx.gif for rl dw
A burn for a good-looking man, certainly. For a man who only lived three years and isn't sure he was supposed to live any longer than that? It hurts, but he doesn't let it show, doesn't let it come across in his voice or anything like it. He's not sure if clones were only supposed to "last" three years or if that, at the end of those three years, there was something to do with radiation. Maybe Lunar believed they'd all be so eager to go home, so sick with cabin fever and feverish with the desire to see "their" wife and daughter that they wouldn't stop to really think about it.
The original Sam Bell would be much older. But Sam? He was never meant to get old.
Still, he can't fault David for it. David shouldn't be expected to tiptoe around anything that could possibly bother Sam. They're not talking about Sam anyway, but a man he's never met.
And, to be honest, is quite glad he didn't.]
Aging is rough to those people who spent so long thinking they were the hottest thing that ever came out of a set of parents. [He shrugs one shoulder, flicking a bit of grass off of his pants before he runs his hand up to rest on his knee.] Vanity, I guess. You live so long being told that you're gorgeous, you do your best to stay gorgeous...and yet it happens. Inevitability, right?
[But not everyone goes off and makes David8s. What a lucky man this Peter Weyland must have been, to be smart and handsome.]