((there are some dodgy POV jumps sometimes and i'm sorry for that, i'm trying not to use the arrow, but if you'd like me to use bold or something to differentiate drop me a comment and say so and i'll edit it))
((go to Tumblr "goddesscat" and go to my AU link "/aus" for a quick breakdown of this AU and to see Character Bios "/vraubios"))
Hourly Analysis
Space Station: Sough - Hour #7
Temperature=23°C – Day Cycle=Stage 2/4 –Station Integrity=89.236%
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A young Troll is on his way to his Hive. It just so happens that today, Day #12, Month #5, Year #202, is the day that this young Troll was fired from his place of work. Though it was only 2 months ago he was given the job, this is not his fastest record for losing employment.
For Convenient reference, the space station Sough's years are three hundred days long. These years break down into a week being ten days, a month being three weeks, a year being ten months and each day is thirty hours long.
These numbers are slightly similar to those of a Planet in close proximity of Sough called Earth, which is inhabited by a species called Humans. This is because, four centuries ago the inhabitants of Earth decided to build Space stations for their growing populace, for ease of understanding they kept close to their original date system.
Three centuries ago Earth created an Alliance with Alternia, a planet in the same Solar system, inhabited by a species called Trolls, and in the last two centuries Trolls have been cohabiting with Humans on some of these Space Stations.
You already know all of this though, as you've been living on Sough for your entire life, which is nearly nineteen and a half years, this roughly translates to seven and a half Alternian sweeps, or 16 Earth years.
Your name is Karkat Vantas. As was previously mentioned, you were fired today, which isn't so bad because your job was boring as fuck. You suppose you didn't need to tell your employer this to his face, but he seemed completely oblivious and somebody had to tell him.
You start to wonder why you bother, every resident of the Space station is free to live here indefinitely, the Immigration System pays for accommodation, food and necessities, but having a job means you can buy luxuries. One of the things you want money to spend on is movies, you have an assorted taste in cinema, but mostly you like Troll Romance movies and Romcoms, there are also a few Human Romance movies you're not too repulsed by, but you really don't like Human/Troll Romance movies, Humans never did grasp the concept of quadrants in all this time.
Recently your best friend has been trying to get you to buy a VR Rig so you can play Virtual Reality games, you haven't even tried his, there's something unnerving about it, but admittedly you want to try it out. You fill your spare time playing a video game called SBUR;B on your computer, you're not very good at it but that isn't the point of the game, you're not really sure what the point is, usually you just keep finding items in treasure chests that tell you to go and play another game, SGR;UB. Your best friend plays this a lot, but you can only play it in Virtual Reality, you can also play SBUR;B in Virtual Reality if you have the VR Rig, you tell yourself you will buy one eventually.
You have what you would describe as a large circle of friends, most of which play SBUR;B, and a handful play SGR;UB. Your SBUR;B account name is carcinoGeneticist, you didn't choose it, the game apparently has some kind of random name generator based on your psychological readouts which makes no sense because you never let your computer scan you, and that name just doesn't translate anything, similarly the game makes you type IN ALL CAPS AND YOU CAN'T TURN IT OFF, IT MAKES IT LOOK LIKE YOU'RE YELLING ALL THE TIME, WHICH IS WRONG BECAUSE YOU ONLY YELL MOST OF THE TIME, FUCK YOU VERY MUCH.
Later, you will make friends with a Human, if somebody were to tell you this now, you wouldn't believe them. You don't hate Humans; you just don't make an effort to converse with them, what's the point? You're on opposite sides of the Space Station.
You suddenly become aware that you've gone completely the wrong way back to your Hive, you got so caught up thinking about benign things that you've been wandering in a residential sector about a 30 minute walk from your own. You go and find a bench and sit down, you're not in the mood to walk back to your Hive right now anyway.
So, what will you do now?
You suppose you could message your best friend to pass some time.
KV: hey, you are never going to guess what happened to me today.
SC: you got fired.
KV:how the fuck did you know that?
SC:okay dude seriously, that is a joke i make every other day.
SC:you didnt really get fired again did you?
KV:yes i did.
KV:my boss was such a grubfucking imbecile i would rather scoop out my own internal organs with an oxidised eating utensil and serve them up to the horrorterrors on a golden nutrition plateau than stay there another minute.
SC:wow KK.
SC:you dont need to do this shit to yourself you know.
KV:it is unbearably monotonous just sitting around in my hive all day sollux, not all of us are graced with the joys of being able to sit around for days on end playing the same stupid game over and over again for years and not get bored of it.
SC:yeah well i get paid to do this.
KV:fuck you okay, fuck you and the high hoofbeast you rode in on.
SC:eheh, sure whatever.
SC:you want to come over?
KV:why the fuck not.
Well at least you have something to do now, it would've been boring back at your empty Hive, you haven't had your Lusus to keep you company for a while now, it seems like so long ago it's hard to remember how long it's really been. You miss him, but he's off caring for a new grub somewhere.
You head to the nearest Shuttle station, you'll take one of the public transportation vehicles to Sollux' Hive, it's way too far to walk. You decide to get something to read on your journey, it's only a 30 minute ride, but you get bored easily.
You pick up the latest issue of Game Grub, you haven't read it in a while, copyright is so tight on Sough that there aren't many games to play and they usually end up reviewing the same game over and over again. This issue has "An Exclusive Look at the Biggest Games in the History of Gaming" written on the cover.
You board the shuttle, find a seat, and flick through a few pages. They have reviews for SBUR;B and SGR;UB in here, you give them a read.
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Synthetic Basic Use Reality; Brainteaser more popularly known as SBURB, is a non-competitive puzzle game you can play on your own or with friends, you are faced with a Planet in which there are many challenges for you to solve! you can choose to complete the puzzles without a time limit in Casual Mode or you can set the game to Challenge Mode and see how high you can get your Completion Percentage before the time's up!
"i think this game is amazing! the environment! the quests! Recently Skaianet took this game into Virtual Reality! and they did a really good job with it! it is fully immersive! and i could spend all day on here!" - Cestus Crisna. 20, Troll it Gaming.
Synthetic Gaming Reality; Unified-Battle more popularly known as SGRUB, is a game where 2 teams of 1-5 players use tactics and advantages to battle it out with their favourite weapons and powers. Highest score at the end of the time limit wins!
"Seriously anyone who hasn't played SGR;UB must not be functioning on basic mental faculties. I cannot comprehend how there even ARE people out there who haven't played this. I shouldn't need to tell you how good this is just play it.
Trust me you will not regret it." - Abroni Anrare. 32, Alternifuckit Gamerstation.
Synthetic Gaming Reality; Unified-Battle© Synthetic Basic Use Reality; Brainteaser© Skaianet Laboratories™ 200-215
That wasn't exclusive at all, you've probably read that stuff a million times in the last two years, they just got some random people to gush out some generic praise, was that last one even a review? Wow, some people are morons. Before you realise it, you're at your stop and exiting the vehicle.
Sollux lives in the more expensive district of the Space Station, there isn't really anything wrong with living in the free areas of course, there are practically no crimes in any of the residential districts and everyone is pretty nice, it's sickening how awesome a place Sough is to live. You've heard rumours about Alternia, even now it's a horrible place to be. In Sough everything is run with the Human's ideals, so grubs don't get put through the kinds of things that you've heard about. It's probably just all lies though, because seriously, who puts grubs through tests to see which ones will survive?
When you get to Sollux' Hive you knock at his entry portal and he takes ages to answer, it would be so much easier if he just had some kind of telekinesis or something, how awesome would that be?
Alas, your best friend is not some super powered mutant or the like, he's just a normal Troll like you. This doesn't strike you as strange in the slightest, why would it? He's always just been: Sollux Captor, general nerd and one of 5 original Beta Testers for, and in the last 6 months sponsored player of, SGR;UB. A game which he still plays religiously after two years.
A game which you have never played, but by the time the Space Station's Artificial Night Filter kicks in, you will have.
You and Sollux end up spending an entire hour discussing movie decisions, you finally compromise and watch a new film neither of you has seen before, it's about an alien race that depend on underground rodents to save them from a less intelligent species of flying reptilian creatures, and it sounds terrible.
Oh god it's worse than it sounded. This cannot even be legal it is so panrottingly awful, you're only ten minutes in and you think your ganderbulbs have already melted out of your ocular sockets.
You watch the whole film anyway.
"Wow." That's about all you can say.
"Yeah, if anyone asks if we've seen it, we deny everything", Sollux says, you nod in agreement. Sollux yawns, you remember him saying something about having to play a bunch of SGR;UB matches for his sponsors from Hour #1 yesterday, which is a stupid time for anyone to be up in general, but 30 hours and then some?
"Dude if you want to go to sleep i'm not going to hold it against you, you look fucking wrecked, how long have you even been awake?"
He looks at you, tilts his head and starts counting on his fingers, he stops, "what day is it?"
"Go to fucking sleep."
Sollux tells you to stay at his Hive, it's not late by any margin, it's only Hour #12, there's still another 6 hours until the Artificial Night Filter kicks in and then after another two hours of gradual darkening it'll be night time and there won't be any light outside apart from the street ambients.
Sleeping in the night and being awake during the day don't phase you at all, it's not like you were born on Alternia, centuries of evolution means that every Troll on the Space Stations are used to it, the only ones that aren't are the ones that came straight from Alternia itself and are still adapting, but Sough doesn't have any of those.
Sollux tells you that your normal room is still how you left it, and you appreciate that because that room is amazing, he's offered for you to stay with him on a more permanent arrangement, but something about that just makes you feel like a mooching asshole and you can't. Besides, sometimes Sollux can honestly drive you up the vertical structural surface. All that, and for a Troll to share a Hive with someone they have to register in a quadrant and you're not in one. Whether that was Sollux' subtle way of asking you to be his Moirail you couldn't tell, but he never mentioned it again, just said 'the offer's always open' and left it at that.
He goes to his respiteblock and you head for his computer, he's told you all his passwords because when you stay over it's pretty much your computer, he can do everything he wants from his VR Rig.
Speaking of VR Rig, you notice as you enter his main entertainment block that he's left it turned on, you stare at it for a few moments, you consider it.
You've always had a sort of fear of Virtual Reality Rigs, you're not even sure why because they've been flawless and there haven't been any general accidents for the last few hundred years – however that translates when you consider where all the technology comes from –usually Trolls have Alternian Rigs, and Humans have Earth Rigs, as a Troll, you can't use Earth Rigs and vice versa, you don't get why not, it's just how things work.
Sollux has some really expensive (and probably modified) hybrid of both, he lives near the middle of the Station, here the Troll and Human sides merge and you're half as likely to have a Human Neighbour as a Troll one. You wonder if he got it so he can have Humans over and play with them, he's never mentioned it to you before. It's probably just that it was the most expensive one and he wants to be able to brag.
You sit in one of the two chairs he has setup in front of the Rig, it looks bigger now that you're sat in front of it. The metal parts are silver, most Rigs are just black but this is Sollux, he always feels the need to make an impression, it has a huge, grey tinted, square screen that takes up half the height of the wall, you haven't actually watched him play before, but you remember him saying that you can see what he sees on the screen, but he can't see it for some reason, that weirds you out a little.
There's two shiny columns either side of the screen built into the wall that go from floor to ceiling, this is where the 4 multiplayer headset hangers are located, each headset is the same, but the bands that keep them around your head are different colours: red, blue, yellow, purple and green, just generic colours. The headsets are simple looking, just thick loose elastic with a buckle to tighten them, two little flap type things that hang down and attach to your temples and read your brain waves. You're surprised really, you've seen some pretty elaborate Headsets advertised online, you thought Sollux would have something showy.
The headsets are wireless but you have no idea of the range on them.
You know he has all 5 headsets, but he only ever has his the random red one out on the bottom most peg on the left column, and the main yellow headset hanging on the front panel of the unit in front of the Rig sticking up out of floor, this bit you've never really looked at before, it has a few buttons on it, some lit up, two flashing, all different colours with Alternian words lit up on all of them in white or black to stand out.
One of them is lit up in red, 'Power'. That would obviously be the button to turn it off. You think about pressing it, but Sollux has said before you can use the Rig if you want to, you should probably wait for him to set it up for you and show you how to use it, but the sudden impulse to pick up that headset is overwhelming, perhaps you could.
You pick up the yellow headset.
