Truth
No family is perfect, Mar.
Shell, there's no perfect life, either.
Or perfect person.
Everyone just likes to pretend.
Every house cleans before guest comes,
And everyone hides their flaws under the rug.
Sheldon has a machine for everything, even if nothing quite does... whatever these goggles do. Did. When they worked.
Marie sits in his tinkering room, her head pressed to the two-eyed not-quite-microscope. The head strap turned out to be a protective case; cut open, it held a mass of wires. Several were broken, but Marie's hands are steady on some replacements—scarce finer than hairs—and she's almost finished hooking up the speakers again. They'd be placed right around the ears if someone was wearing the goggles on their eyes; must be useful for relaying orders. And there are a number of projectors built into the goggle's edges, LED's smaller than the tip of her pencil, most of which are too smashed to be used.
The door opens behind her. Marie sits up, her muscles stiff from too long bent over, to see Sheldon slip past her and hop on a stepladder to reach the blaster shelf. "How goes it?"
"It doesn't make any sense," Marie confesses, stretching. She backs away so Sheldon can take a look. "Lights that close to their eyes won't help them see in the dark, though maybe it helps at short range. But I can't for the life of me figure out the projectors."
"If they have projectors and lights, there might be a memory card in there somewhere." Sheldon hops off the stool, blaster in hand, and peers through the microscope. "You might be able to put that through your laptop, instead of using the projectors."
"This is why I like you," Marie admits, laughing, and Sheldon smiles back before rushing off.
The memory card is in the only undamaged part of the strap. Marie extracts it and examines it: it should be compatible with her laptop.
And yes, once it's in it loads. Marie finds herself sorting through system commands and software even fluency in Octarian language can't help her understand. But there are video files, and a customizer module, so Marie boots the customizer and selects a video (if a video had twenty interconnected files) called Routine Resource Gathering.
The video, when it loads, has... nothing to do with resources. It's a first-person view as three other Octolings walk around outside with her, talking; they seem to be... 'her' family? And they want to know why she's just standing around?
Hesitantly, Marie presses the arrow keys, making her—Marina, Marie supposes—move. There are no birds around, but the crunch of ground underfoot and snap of twigs is otherwise perfect. Her 'parents' ask her to gather sticks for a fire...and an info box pops up, a drop-down menu of mushrooms, rocks, and other supplies asking what should be gathered. Marie selects 'mushrooms' and the screen shimmers, then announces there's none in the area, and Marina's mother asks her and her brother to go deep in the forest to find some.
Marie leans back in her seat, shaking her head and dislodging the headphones. What the squit is—
what was it Marina said, again, during the splatfest? Marie pulls out her phone. It only takes a second to find it, Marina's voice surrounded by music and talk and laughter as they ate: "Mine broke, at the concert, and it's felt strange ever since, not wearing them, but it was like I could—I knew what was going on, I could be free for the first time ever."
...Oh, no. Marie raises her eyes back to the screen, to the perfect representation of a day out with family. A day labeled 'resource gathering'.
"They told me it meant I was special and important. All it really meant was I did what I was told without fuss. That the goggles worked well."
That the goggles...
Marie shuts down the program and rests her head on the keyboard, because she doesn't want to be right. But if it is, every Octarian she's ever faced may not have known they were in combat.
If they got the goggles off them all, maybe there wouldn't be an Octarian threat at all.