Chapter 3

"You do not cheat me of my childhood.
You bring me blankets for the walls of my forts.
There is no anger with the eyebrows raised.
When you do the fantastic I am amazed."

- From Alone by Lisa Loeb.

'Good morning, Harper!' Trance said brightly, smiling benignly as usual, like nothing in the world could hurt her, as if she felt a need to live up to her celestial, golden appearance. Usually Harper would grin back at her, albeit a little nervously; he had never been as comfortable around Golden-Trance as he had been around Purple-Trance. However, today he didn't even acknowledge her greeting, apart from to stare at her and stick his tongue out. Trance stared back for a moment, then dismissed at as another of Harper's strange habits.

Harper walked into the mess hall and slumped into a chair, his back nearly touching the seat of the chair, and promptly began sucking his thumb, looking like he had no idea what he was doing. He noticed the whole crew gaping openly at him. 'What?'

'Harper… are you feeling alright?' Beka asked cautiously.

'Nah… I want some Coco-Pops,' he whined petulantly.

'Coco… are you sure you're all right? We don't have any… uh… "Coco-Pops". You can have toast if you like?'

'But I want Coco-Pops!' He persisted sulkily. Then he seemed to realise he wasn't going to get his own way over this and grinned like he didn't care. 'But toast sounds good too. Yes, please!'

Trance placed a cool hand on his forehead. 'I think he's delirious; he hasn't even asked for a beer yet!' Harper looked upon beer in the morning as his way of fighting "The Man", though he never specified who "The Man" was.

'Beer?' he giggled. 'Then I could get drunk!' He lolled back in his chair, with his head drooped over the back and his tongue hanging out in a state of mock-inebriation.

'Uh… I think we're a bit late for that, Trance,' Dylan said, worriedly, but sounding slightly amused. Beka rolled her eyes.

'Very funny, Harper. I think your head was a little bit more damaged yesterday than we thought!' She reached out and ruffled his dishevelled mop of blonde hair playfully. He batted her hands away and pulled a face like he'd just trodden in Magog-shit.

'Yuck! I got touched by a girl!' he groaned, pretending to scrub his hair viciously.

'Well… I never thought I'd see the day that Seamus Harper would resent being touched by a girl!' Beka said, flabbergasted and a little offended. He grinned stupidly and kicked her under the table, not hard enough to hurt but enough to make her jump and stare at him like she feared for his sanity. Then his attention span ran out and he looked up hopefully at each crewmember I turn.

'Can I have ketchup on my toast?'

'Harper? Are you in here?' Dylan asked, stepping into machine shop seven and carefully avoiding piles of scrap metal and food that was turning blue.

'Vroom… Oh, hi, Dylan!' Harper was sitting on the floor, his legs stretched out in front of him, one hand flat on the floor supporting him and the other making a model of the Andromeda fly round in circles, occasionally providing the sound effects for vicious missile attacks on a crushed can of Sparky Cola. 'Boom! Haha! Take that, ya smelly nasty people, you suck!'

'Rrright…' Dylan said uncertainly, then dismissed it as another one of Harper's strange fantasy-worlds. 'Well, we arrive on Sinti in three days, and I was just wondering if you'd finished that report on your research into phased density shifting?'

'Nah, bor-ing!' he replied, not taking his eyes off of the mini-Andromeda that he had built himself.

'You haven't? But you promised the Perseids at the university that…'

'Don't wanna do any of that!' Harper drawled. 'I want to play. Stupid chin-heads can work it out all by themselves if they want to know that badly.'

'But… Harper! You said that you'd much rather talk about your theories with the students than sit through the Commonwealth conferences. You said…'

'I said baloney!' Harper interrupted, giggling. He lifted the model again. 'Vrooooommm!'

Dylan sighed. This had gone way past far enough. He dropped a hand onto the engineer's shoulder. 'Right, I'm confining you to your quarters until you start to make sense. Can you get there yourself or do I have to get Rommie to escort you?'

Harper slapped Dylan's hand away and stood up, his lower lip sticking out pathetically. 'Get off of me! You're mean! I hate you!' he yelled, and with that he ran away in the direction of his quarters, his gait slightly clumsy, his legs going in all directions like he wasn't completely in control of them. Dylan stared after him helplessly.