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!
no subject
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.
no subject
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!
no subject
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. ]
no subject
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!
no subject
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.
no subject
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.]
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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'.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.]