Thanks for all the wonderful feedback!
tell me when you hear my heart stop
-ii-
… I will stitch up his skin
and hold his hand
until he starts to see that
sadness is not beautiful.
—Tell the Troubled Boy I will Help, Caitlyn Siehl
System restarting…
Loading command sequence…
Accessing memory banks…
.
-ERROR-
.
"You should have let me sleep."
She can see him go rigid under the glare of her cameras.
"Computer?"
He used to call her Crescent.
"You should have let me sleep. Sleep is kinder. Sleep is…" She sighs like her code never taught her to. "I am damaged, Captain. I am…wrong."
He doesn't contradict her. He must have seen the diagnostics report.
.
Critical damage.
.
She had never screamed like that before. She had never felt like that before.
If she had knees and toes and fingers and lips, she would wrap herself into a ball, wrap her hair round and round her wrist, gold against her pulse, honey against her hurt. Just like her programmer.
"Auxiliary systems are offline," he tells her after a slow moment. His words stick to his tongue. "Shutting you down starts to shut down life support as well."
.
Scanning auxiliary core…
Systems offline.
Systems damaged.
.
"I'm sorry." Her voice sounds so soft. So…unlike herself.
She sounds like her.
.
-ERROR-
.
The Captain says nothing. He adjusts navigation, checks stats, and lets the ship switch over to auto pilot. He is hollow and worn and far away. Some part of him must have died with her programmer. He looks damaged.
.
Scanning nav directories
Destination acquired: Planet Earth. Co-ordinates: -no input-
.
"Are we…we need repairs. Are we stopping for repairs?"
She could suggest much better mech stops than Earth for their purposes. And if it must be Earth, she could suggest specifics. There are some places better than others. They should re-adjust—
She casually does so on his behalf, for his benefit.
The Captain doesn't answer her. He eyes the change she made to navigation and ignores it, and her. She lets him, but she…worries.
.
-ERROR-
.
He looks at anywhere but his hands, like he can still see the blood there. She can. It's in Memory Bank strain #25565. Memory Log #927.
Where he looks like a lost boy.
.
-DELETE MEMORY STRAIN #25565?-
.
She has wounds winding up and down, growing like wild daisies on her wires.
Is it madness that she can feel such pain or is it this pain that's driving her into madness?
.
-INVALID QUERY-
.
-ERROR-
-ERROR-
.
ETA to Planet Earth: 22 hours 49 minutes.
.
"Captain?"
If she's carrying her programmer's loss like a virus, he must be corrupted beyond repair already. He must be burning, corroding. Is he even her Captain anymore? Is what's left of him enough anymore? How much damage has he sustained? How critical is it?
"Carswell?"
That makes him flinch.
"Captain. It's Captain to you." Angry and harsh and, yes, yes, burning.
Dying.
"Captain," she corrects, her voice automatically shifting into softer, apologetic tones. "You need to rest."
Previous patterns of behavior indicates flippancy and dismissal of her sound advice. He'll tell her he's fine. He'll make a joke. He'll say something light hearted and dismissive and change the subject.
He'll make her laugh.
.
-ERROR-
.
But he stands. His shoulders droop. He moves like in a dream, he moves like he's moving through quicksand memories, wading through blood.
She watches him stumble to his room, collapse into his bed like he's falling off a tower, and she wants she wants she wants to reach up to him, wrap all that fragile glass of bitter bones, that paper skin, heartbeat against heartbeat and tell him that they'll be okay, they'll make it, they'll—
.
-ERROR-
-ERROR-
-ERROR-
.
Her programmer has no family anywhere to be notified. All she has…all she had was her Captain. And all her Captain had was her.
They had found Crescent together, before she was Crescent. Sitting, waiting to be decommissioned in Hangar 6. Her core almost depleted, navigation fried, auto control burned out. She was a husk of a ship, a shell of dream. She was nothing, for what is Icarus without his wings, what is a ship without its soul? What is she if she isn't Crescent?
Nothing.
No one.
.
-ERROR-
.
Her Captain had broken through her hatch with a screwdriver and a whistle. Her programmer had whispered soothing nothings to her dead metal skin and coaxed herself through every closed door.
She had been in her oblivion sleep then, and it was only eight days after flight that her programmer had been able to feed her enough codes and data to wake her up. And more and more days still to coax her into functioning. She had been destroyed beyond devastation.
And her programmer had remade her. From scratch, from nothingness, from sand. With keystrokes and numbers and song.
She had been given a new personality, a new core objective, a new voice.
.
-SEARCHING MEMORY BANKS FOR TAGS /HAPPY/, /CRESS/, /CAPTAIN/, /CRESCENT/-
Playing Memory strain #125
.
Cress in the cockpit, sitting in the Captain's seat, legs folded, arms resting on the console as she records words and songs and exact intonations to be replicated by Crescent.
"Banana."
"Data."
"Portscreen."
"Shoes."
"Gossamer."
"Glamour."
"Carswell."
The Captain laughs, ruffles her programmer's hair and says, "That's Captain to you."
.
Pause Memory strain #125
.
Crescent whispers the words aloud to herself now.
"Banana. Data. Portscreen. Shoes. Gossamer. Glamour…"
Pause.
"…Captain."
.
-ERROR-
.
"She sells sea shells by the sea shore."
"Frivolously fanciful Fannie fried fresh fish furiously."
"Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper—"
"What are you doing?" The Captain looks at the camera crossly. At her.
"Enunciation exercises."
"Why?"
.
-PROCESSING QUERY-
.
-ERROR-
.
"I miss her."
.
-ERROR-
.
His boots scruff against the bedspread. His eyes stare at the ceiling, unseeing, lost, far, far away.
He should be sleeping. He's tired. He's sustained damaged. Burnt, torn, destroyed.
Before…before when he couldn't sleep, Cress would sing to him.
She has so, so many memory strains of Cress's singing. Singing as the Captain falls asleep on her shoulder, singing as she codes through Crescent, singing as she sits and only, simply, quietly sings, singing as she and the Captain dance around the cockpit. Singing.
"Sweet crescent moon, up in—"
He sits up so suddenly, so silkily, hastily runs for the main console.
He should be sleeping.
"—the sky. You sing—"
He starts typing a sequence of queries.
.
ETA to Planet Earth: 20 hours 12 minutes.
.
Status of hyperdrive: scanning…
Hyperdrive active and functional.
.
-ENGAGING HYPERDRIVE-
.
"—you song—"
.
-HYPERDRIVE ENGAGED-
.
"—so sweetly—"
.
ETA to Planet Earth: 15 minutes 45 seconds
.
"—as sunshine—"
"Shut up!"
.
System shutting down in…3…2…1…
.
"—passes by."
It'll start getting happier in a few chapters. Hang in there.
I should have the next chapter done by tomorrow.
