After long enough of being alone
Everyone must face their share of loneliness
In my own time, nobody knew
The pain I was goin' through
And waitin' was all my heart could do
-The Carpenters, Only Yesterday.
"And yet...Sometimes at night...I can still feel the pain creeping up inside of me. Slithering through my body...like a snake."
The voice of a ghost echoed mechanically through the small workroom, drowned out by elevated voices of the two figures bathed in the impersonal and sterile white laboratory lights. The dull white light of a screensaver illuminated the battered tin of a snuff case beside piles and piles of reports bearing the insignia XOF and covered in censor bars.
"You took my SON away from me!" The man with wild hair and thick glasses shouted , gesticulating expressively with his hands, voice cracking in his anger "You sent him away without even ASKING ME?"
The woman was thin, whiplike and as pale as a pearl. She stared down at him with contempt though long lashes.
"Only after you attempted to use him as Skullface's little labrat" She sneered in her cold and english-accented voice "You wanted a little boy to pilot a potentially fatal machine of total war. Of course I sent him away. Somewhere he'll be safe and as far away from his wretch of a father as he can be"
"Safe?" The man's hands gestured wildly, threatening to knock something off the crowded shelves "Sahalanthropus is completely safe! And my OWN SON doesn't have to be protected from ME!" His voice cracked again, heat seething behind his words "This is to spite me, isn't it? You've always been too bitter and obsessed with that woman to care about anything but that unfeeling machine!"
"Thats where you're mistaken, Huey." she sneered at him "If you were a halfway competent scientist, you wouldn't need to endanger my child just to get some data. This isn't about spite, It's about logic." She cooly turned her back to him to look into the pulsing red light of the Mammal Pod "and you're wrong about her being unfeeling."
"Like a snake…" Repeated the pod in it's tinny replica of a dead woman's voice.
"See what I mean?" he snapped "you're obsessed!"
"You wouldn't understand love if it smacked you across that empty head of yours" She murmured bitterly "Get out of my office, Huey. Complain to that skeletal bastard if you wish. I don't care, as long as he's safe. Far away from the parasite who attempted to turn him into a sacrifice to the god of war."
The slamming door sounded with finality, leaving her alone in the red-tinted room.
"If only you could really be here , Joy" She sighed and cleared a small space at the desk to lean on , her eyes downcast "Whatever would you think of the woman I've become"
"Goodmorning Doctor" came the pre-programed greeting.
The doctor known as Strangelove rested her head on the table as the chill of the workroom penetrated through her. She closed her eyes.
"It's night, Joy" She muttered. "I'll fix your sensors in the morning. But until then, trust me. It's night" She closed her eyes to try and stem the tears that threatened to fall. "The stars are out in full force tonight." She shivered, pulling on her coat. "I'm going to go watch them. For the both of us."
"Doctor, Do not go alone" The pod said, another pre-programed phrase she'd fed into the system ages ago.
"I won't, Joy. You'll still be with me" She wound the old bandanna around her hand inside her pocket. The old fabric was frayed at the edges from so much worrying by her fingers, but it was still hers. "I'll be safe" She hesitated, her body tensed.
But it'd been too long since she'd heard it last. Those simple words that she hadn't heard since the last time she saw her son. Since the last time she got to handle the Mammal Pod without feeling too ashamed of what she'd done to it over the recent years.
"I…" She swallowed the lump in her throat "I love you , Joy" It was the first call and response she ever programmed into the hulking machine. She waited to hear if it still worked, even as her enemies hurt and maimed her neural network.
"I love you, Doctor" Came the pod's reply, in a low and quiet tone.
The door shut on the pod with a soft click, as it returned to it's quiet murmuring of Joy's last day.
"Kill me now" It asked a room that held no answer.
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
A night filled with stars gave way into a morning filled with coffee, snuff, and disappointment. The Doctor's desk was covered in new reports from her XOF overseers , demanding progress on her project. The battered tin box, newly emptied, was useless to her now. In need of refilling. They wanted the pod to be more efficient. They wanted it to power that damned machine of theirs. The brain to a massive, hulking monster. But she didn't have a choice in the matter. Orders were orders.
Especially when they were asked of you with the cold barrel of a pistol pressed against the back of your neck. Figuratively.
And perhaps a little literally as well.
Dr. Strangelove brushed her fingers over the keys of the program console. It wouldn't be of any use. She had to go into the pod and physically rearrange some components in her core.
She had assistants, yes. And that wretch Emmerich was assigned to the same project. But the interior of the pod was for her hands alone. Only hers. Because this machine with the voice of the woman she loved was the culmination of so much work.
Work she couldn't stray from. Not after all she'd seen. She was there, since the beginning. She watched Joy take off into space, and dug her out of the wreckage with burning hands and tears in her eyes. She'd heard the news that the Boss defected while having a quick dinner between programming sessions at Langley. She didn't believe a word of it.
She fought the man she knew killed her. She built the Mammal Pod into a vessel for her spirit. She saw the pain in his eyes as he too tried to figure out Joy's true will.
She saw him fail in his pursuit. She saw him walk an ever darkening path and left his base before it came to pass.
She , under pain of death, helped to create another nightmarish perversion of Joy's final will. For the mysterious Cipher. who didn't at all understand those last pain filled words. Damn him.
She'd seen just how deep the tendrils of corruption spread. Snaking through history from Coldman, the man who killed Joy and set the world down this future as dark as a starless sky, to her old grief-twisted comrade, to the misguided protege fixated on a world where soldiers always had a purpose.
Everyone got Joy's will wrong. And with every new bloody fool who butchered her words to make them look appealing to their purposes, the world sunk deeper into the quagmire of endless cold war.
She glowered at an assistant who bumped his way past her computer with a stack of reports in his hands.
She stood and threw her coat on over her shoulders in a smooth motion, leaving her empty snuff box behind. Her eyes narrowed at the thought of all those men.
She knew, after that nightmare in South America, what the Boss' true will was. She alone understood those final words. She'd heard them enough. Ran them over and over and over inside her head and through the machine at her fingertips. She wove between the bustle of military scientists to the main command console, and began running her diagnostic.
Joy was the light of her life. That perfect moon-glow of her presence may have changed over the years into the piercing , thrumming red that filled her workroom late at night, but she was still there. Hidden in circuits, cores and wires. Creating her own personal night sky of pin-pricked LED's and winking indicator lights.
Hiding her secrets.
The diagnostic began, and asked for a login confirmation. She didn't use her XOF login. They knew that one. They could keep tabs on her activity. But for this she needed them in the darkness. She typed in her private login, and watched the computer accept it...giving her access to the full scan exclusive only to her.
Because secrets she had indeed. Because she'd grown tired of wallowing in misery and loneliness years ago. She was a genius, after all. She saw a problem in the desecration of her Joy's wishes, and her logical mind planned to fix it.
The AI was...adequate in helping her understand her will a little better. But it was only a stopgap measure. The only way to kill the memetic virus that was the very idea of the metal gear. To get true peace…. Was to start over.
Chirps and beeps emitted from the computer as readouts appeared over the graphic of the pod and it's interior. Cooling fans, venting properly. Chassis, no breach detected. Core temperature, acceptable. She spoke up
"Recite the test phrase for me, Joy"
"The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog…..Doctor" Came her simulated voice.
"Very nice. It seems your vocal capabilities are still in working order after what those barbarians did to you"
"Did to me" repeated the pod.
Strangelove sighed, and clicked on an area in the interior of the Pod's structure. A storage tank for air...for nutritional supplements. And an engine that drained the Pod's energy more than anything the blunders of Huey and his masters could have done. She was so...so sorry for that. But it had to be done. Everything was for her. For a world where neither of them would be trapped in prisons of loneliness or steel.
The mistakes of their shared past ate at the world like a parasite. The only cure was to stop it before it all began. Or alter it...somehow. Some things had to stay the same. Or...similar. Like Hal, a child she cared more for than expected. A child of her blood and Joy's dreams.
His wretch of a father could go. Science of course, cut out the more...unsavory parts of that union. And science could do it again. This time without the fool trying to latch on like a diseased tick. She'd never loved him. She thought he was a friend. She respected him, briefly, before she realized what she thought was kind intelligence was just a mask over a coward who blamed the world for his own cruelties and mistakes.
A damned fool. And soon she would be rid of him. She would be rid of everything she'd ever regretted or despised.
Of course, the AI component of the Mammal Pod was in perfect working order (though perhaps the coolants could be rerouted and a few of the boards could use some updates, and… no. She was getting sidetracked). It didn't need any more work. It was the great, thrumming engine in the center she was concerned with.
It was the result of a wayward thought about the nature of time. She'd done a lot of reading about time and reality since she lost Joy to the vicious hunger of man. She watched readouts flash before her eyes. It looked like the machine was stable. That it wouldn't, at least, suffer a critical meltdown upon it's first use.
She'd been reading about time since she discovered just how little of it she likely had left. And she read it with her logical mind. The mind that so impressed Turing and charmed the attentions of Joy back when there was no Strangelove..only the young doctor with her unscarred hands and hopeful optimism for a future in the stars.
Her logical mind had come up with an answer.
Her logical mind had built a machine that would either kill her, or it would give her one of the rarest things this world had to offer. A second chance. One not even Skullface, Huey, or Cipher could take from her.
The pod's readouts said it was in good shape. Enough power was being diverted to her little side project. And if any of her many notes and probes into the subject were correct...it would work. Maybe. But such was the price of science. She'd try some subjects first. Some mice, maybe.
But for the moment, she was satisfied with the results. She closed the illicit files, and went back to more mundane tests and checks. More of her 'assistants' busied themselves with schematics of the behemoth the pod was supposed to power behind her like frenzied worker bees. They were easy to tune out.
It was as easy as it was to lose herself in her work and let the thoughts of the day drift away in the sea of facts, figures and code. It was a joy all in it's own. That work. It was all she had to live for, some days. Things had gotten...better...after Costa Rica. But they hadn't healed completely.
Huey only made them worse.
And everything she heard about Jack...Snake..Big Boss, whatever he was going by these days… that only compounded it.
But all those thoughts were distractions. She shook her mind free of them, and with a remote control, flipped on the speakers around the lab.
Assistants jolted, voices yelped in surprise as a cheerful whistle began to pipe through the laboratory. It filled the room, and drowned out the concerns and the murmurs of discontent that were plaguing her work. Strangelove couldn't help but smile as the familiar song played.
She hummed along as she typed on the console, her head gently bobbing along with the melody.
Sing, sing a song. Sing out loud, sing out strong
The light of the Mammal Pod began to pulse in time to the music. It's engines thrummed, until a shrill and faltering series of beeps began playing through it's exterior speakers. The thrumming turned into a sharp, shrill whirr.
Sing of good things not bad. Sing of happy not sad
Dr. Strangelove approached the pod, opening its chassis, and stepping inside. She sang along with the song, brushing her fingers over memory boards and wires. The electricity in the air hummed in her ears and tingled through her fingertips.
Sing, sing a song. Make it simple to last your whole life long
The doctor removed her gloves, and tossed them aside. The scars from the Mercury Seven project marred more than just her mind. Crinkled burn scars traveled from her palms, up her wrists and along her forearms. Memories of the price both her and The Boss paid for America's pride.
The shrill whirr resolved itself into a halting feminine voice. That ghostly echo of The Boss. The Ghost in the Machine, that began to softly form the words of the song.
"Don't...wor….ood ..nough…" it started "For...Anyone..else...t...hear"
Dr. Strangelove guided the Mammal Pod, just as she did when she was first building her. She sang the words, softly and slowly as she worked on redirecting the heat flow through the core of the AI pod.
Just sing, sing a song. Sing, sing a song The pod and her sang together. Despite the assistants. Despite the distractions, they were alone together in the moment. Singing their song. And in those moments, time seemed to slip away from her more than usual. Through loop after loop after loop of the Carpenter's classic, day turned into night. The assistants were gone...and there was only her.
Not that she minded. She preferred the solitude. Even her time in MSF hadn't dulled her desire to avoid most other people. With...of course...a few exceptions. She rarely let anyone into her heart. And those whom she did had to earn their way into that sacred ground.
She didn't know how much longer she worked. The minutes slipped by. It was dark out she knew that from her wristwatch. The stars were likely out. She contemplated stopping her work to go and stargaze for a moment...but she was too focused on her work to stop now.
It wasn't until the sharp, shrill sound of metal on metal rang out in the AI pod's interior that her workflow was interrupted. Her head snapped up, just in time to see the seated figure of Huey shoving the pod's door shut. The slam echoed through the small space, followed soon after by the hiss of air as the pod sealed shut. He must have engaged the locks from the console.
Panic overwhelmed her for an oxygen-wasting moment. Her fists slammed against cold metal, echoing dully into the room beyond as she shouted herself hoarse. She used up precious air shouting for the damned bastard to open the door. To free her. That he was a murderer.
She knew he was out there, listening. Waiting for the moment her fists stopped pounding and her body went limp. Her eyes turned cold in that moment as the fear was chilled out of her. She let out a hissing breath. "I won't give him the bloody satisfaction" she spat, and turned towards Joy's core. The AI pod had begun emitting a chirping sound with the sudden activity.
Her air was going to run out if she didn't do something. The bastard had seen to that. But what the bastard didn't know was the Pod's secret purpose. Dr. Strangelove's lips twisted into a grim smile.
"Lets see how you like it when I wipe you out of the history books, Huey Emmerich" she snarled, grabbing the interior console and typing in a rapid series of commands. "Try to harm my son. Try to rub me out? Bloody idiot"
The great hidden machine inside the Core hummed to life, which activated the cooling units along its chassis with a mechanical scream. Fans hummed to life, lights dimmed and flickered with the rerouting of power. A panel opened up in the floor of the pod, next to a small command console hidden near the memory boards. She huddled low against the warm chassis of the machine, and reached into the panel. First was the oxygen mask. She strapped it onto her face, and took long, deep breaths of the filtered air. She didn't know how long this would take. She'd yet to test it properly. She didn't want to die of asphyxiation before she got the damned thing started. Then came the small IV, with enough liquid nutrients to last her...a few days, if she was lucky. She wasn't sure what the state of her body would be during this adventure. And Starvation wasn't a pleasant way to die. She rested against the chassis for a moment, breathing deep of the air and shivering as the cold IV dripped into her veins.
When she'd calmed enough to think, she pulled the command console close, and set it on her lap. This ….experiment...was insane. But it was this or die. She wasn't ready. She hadn't tested the device yet...but it was all she had. She closed her eyes, fingers shaking as she tried to type the date into the provided boxes. Two weeks before the Snake Eater mission. Enough time to stop this once and for all.
Fear caused her breaths to swallow, before she forced herself to steady them. No sense wasting the purified air. Fear was no excuse to lose control. She'd been scared plenty of times before. She wasn't a stranger to fear and she sure as hell wasn't about to let it consume her. It was do or die.
Besides. Either way she got to see Joy again.
It was worth it.
Her shaking fingers hit the enter key of the machine, as she attached the needle and suction pad connected to the machine to the back of her neck, connecting her with the machine. A sudden, sharp shock rocked through her skull , and her fingers twitched over the keys. The numbers on the date readout were altered by her unintentional keystrokes, but the electrical sensation humming through her body drove all sense from her. She didn't have the time to even notice.
She could only sink against the chassis of the Pod as the humming of the machine grew louder and louder around her. A deep, loud pulse like the beat of a heart in a lover's chest pounded in her ears. Her vision blurred and distorted in time with the thrum, and for a moment, she thought perhaps she was really going to die in here. Her breath came in short, sharp gasps through the breathing tube, the world began to go dark at the corners of her vision.
She could feel the static of temporal energy crackle over her skin. It was familiar to her as any other radiation. The engine inside the pod stored and converted the strange energy into a usable form...and now she was flooding her body with the volatile stuff.
She prayed to the stars above that this would not kill her. That the program designed to manipulate the time/space energies around her into a specific date and time would not prove to be a failure. But her body was going numb, and her vision had pinpricked until the world had turned into a spot of light on an infinite expanse of black.
The chirps and beeps of the Mammal Pod resolved as her vision went black into the soft voice of The Boss….Joy. Her slightly mechanical voice sung to the doctor in a soft and comforting whisper.
Sing of love there could be, sing for you and for me
Dr. Strangelove reached up blindly with numb hands, hands that didn't feel a part of her. Her painted lips parted into a soft smile, mouthing along with the music. For a moment, it felt as if arms had closed around her, pulling her into the embrace of the darkness.
She was aware that she stopped breathing...and for a moment, she floated there in that infinite darkness, breathless. It was cold, lonely, and emptier than anything she ever could have imagined.
But then, in the distance, a small dot of light appeared. And then another. And another. Until these pulsing dots formed a network of stars and constellations that filled the void like the night sky of her dreams.
Each seemed so tiny, the size of a flea in her mind's eye, but she had the feeling that each one was inescapably huge. Nigh-infinite in and of itself. Pieces of a never-ending whole. She felt like crying , but she was nothing in this starscape. She had no body for those tears to come.
It was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. And for a moment, she understood what Joy had seen out there among the stars. Within the beauty of the void. Where everything was one, and lines carved by greedy men meant nothing.
Uncountable moments later, she felt a strange tug. The lights approached her mind's eye, her speed increasing and increasing until the constellations became nothing more than streaking lines in her vision.
She sped through the sea of multicolored light and void, fast approaching one of the pinpricks in the distance. It grew larger as she flew closer. First the size of a softball...then a van...then a building...until there was nothing but the light.
She hit it, and sensation rushed back to her with the concussive force of a freight train. Dr. Strangelove jolted suddenly forward. Her eyes, physical once more, snapped open only to be dazzled by the light. Everything was a blur,and she found her physical feet stumbling along a tile floor.
Her mind reeled, struggling to make sense of everything around her. Her vision blurred through the dark haze of her familiar sunglasses. She was breathing. A good sign. She could feel her legs...and…
"Woah there, Harriet" A male voice laughed to her left "I know they're national heroes, but you don't have to go tripping all over yourself at first sight"
Another voice murmured "Which is why we shouldn't have a damned woman on this project."
Vision focused, still too-bright and uncomfortable, and resolved itself into a white and blue hallway. On the back wall, was a long familiar logo emblazoned behind a group of men in orange space suits. NASA.
She'd recognize them anywhere. The Mercury Seven. As young as the day she last saw them.
Her breaths grew shallow...quick… She looked down, over her ill-fitting suit jacket. Over the NASA badge emblazoned with 'Dr. Harriet Camille Sutton- Computer Science and Engineering' , and to her shaking hands.
Her shaking , smooth hands. No crinkled scar tissue. No dark burns against her pale and colorless skin. Nothing but smooth flesh.
She'd set the date right, didn't she? And where was the AI Pod? Her way home? It was supposed to come with her right?
No...no she was in her own body. Her own...younger...body. Meaning only her consciousness must have traveled through the time stream.
Her mind raced with possibilities and theories without answers, as before her the men posed for a photograph.
"With the help of these brave men" came her Director's voice through the fog in her mind "America will triumph on its race to the stars"
It was too much.
Dr. Harriet Camille Sutton , computer scientist and engineer on the Mercury Project, collapsed onto NASA's cold tile floor in a dead faint.