002 - The Stargazing Meme

[aflockofmemegulls]

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!

prompts

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!

Comments

[supraliminal]

[ his mild expression remains unchanging, while his memory churns and picks up images of green jello and congealed half-fluids. he would hike up his shirt to show sam his perfectly sculpted abs (it's a perk of being a perfect android), but he knows that that would be bragging.

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.

[profitableboron]

[Sam had kept himself as fit as he possibly could. It wasn't just for his job by the end of it, but for Tess and Eve. He didn't want to go back to Earth looking like a lumberjack with a paunch, had had his hair cut and shaved himself clean in preparation for the launch home. Some days he hadn't wanted to get on that treadmill at all, but an astronaut had to be in a certain shape, and who wanted to welcome back their husband plus thirty pounds after him being gone for three years? Sam wouldn't do that to Tess, wouldn't do that to his job.

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.

[supraliminal]

[ 'it's not its fault'. and maybe if someone had understood that about david, he wouldn't feel quite so hollow about being hollow-- bitterness is a vice that david embraced for a while as a virtue, something that spawns from complicated reactions, something illogical. if david can embrace entropy, he shouldn't be considered so static; like the faces of the moon, waxing and waning, it's not david's fault that he's prone to swings in artificially constructed, perfect moods.

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'.

[profitableboron]

[Sam likes David. It's not an artificial feeling (as far as he's aware; even though he's a clone, he's still human—he's the clone of a human, what else would he be?), but nothing short of reality. It's not the same way he likes warm pasta or fresh air because David isn't a something like food or breathing. He's someone, not just a noun, but a proper noun. He has A Name. His name is David, and he is not seen as a robot or a very highly functioning computer program.

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.

[supraliminal]

[ the prompt, 'how do you feel', is acknowledged with a faint gleam in perfect-blue eyes. he recognizes the query, digests it and places it in context, and it's not so much of a challenge to do so as it is natural-- natural for david8s, natural for him. he was built to know emotion. ]

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.

[profitableboron]

[Sam has spent the majority of his life away from the Earth. He hasn't known grass in a long time. So while David seems content to stand about, Sam takes a moment to pull his hands from his pockets, settle them down, and sit on the ground. It's not overly comfortable, but it's dirt and plant life and a planet he once believed he had been born and raised on. It's good enough for him. So he just sits, tucking his ankles under each other and letting his knees rest above the ground, elbows tossed over them as though he hasn't a care in the world.

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

[supraliminal]

[ the sarcasm is well-met, mostly because david agrees with it. there's a little huff of a laugh, almost arrogant if it weren't for the fact that david actually looks pleased about what sam's implying. ]

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

[profitableboron]

[He got old.

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.]